told by the younger Grattan, upon "the high authority of Mr Foster." Mr Foster, be it remembered, was the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, who took a prominent part in opposing the Union, and who was also a strong opponent of Catholic emancipation. His story—that "the Opposition had their speeches on the Union, with other documents, prepared for publication, and intrusted them to one Moore, a Dublin publisher, who sold them to Lord Castlereagh, who had them burned in Dublin Castle," is one which requires some corroboration. The speeches of the Opposition in the Irish Parliament are duly recorded in the Irish parliamentary debates, and Lord Castlereagh is little likely to have troubled himself to destroy them in another shape. The "high authority" of Mr Foster is a matter of opinion; but as Mr Gladstone is, I believe, an admirer of Charles Fox, he may perhaps remember his comment on the Union, that "one might perhaps suppose that whatever Foster opposed had some good in it."1

It is, of course, indisputable that peerages and pensions were somewhat freely bestowed, but it is only just to take into consideration the extraordinary nature of the occasion. An enormous change was about to take place in the existing institutions of the country. The separate existence of the Irish Legislature was about to be terminated; many more or less lucrative places, which had been contingent upon that existence, were to be abolished; and Mr Gladstone's own impassioned language shows us how these things were certain to be misrepresented by the ene

mies of Great Britain as a cruel wrong inflicted upon Ireland. It is surely somewhat strange and inconsistent that the very men who raise this cry proceed almost in the same breath to stigmatise as "bribery "the generous spirit in which the British Government endeavoured to minimise any possible grievances which might be caused by the change, to conciliate Irish national feeling, and to meet individual claims with a liberal response. Lord Castlereagh admitted that "the Irish Government was liable to the charge of having, in a few instances, yielded to unreasonable demands; but had the Union miscarried, and the failure been traceable to a reluctance on the part of Government to use the patronage in their power, he thought they would have met with, and in fact would have deserved, less mercy."2 Public duty and the interests of Ireland, quite as much as those of Great Britain, had determined the Government to prevent this miscarriage, and true patriotism will approve their determination. Something, indeed, be

sides the Union was needed to bring prosperity to Ireland and security to the empire, for without public spirit in public men these ends could hardly be anticipated. Upon this point, and at this particular moment, I venture to recommend to Mr Gladstone and his colleagues the appropriate words of Mr Froude :

"A Union," he says, "would not of itself secure good government, or prevent Ireland's interests from being sacrificed to parliamentary manoeuvres. Unprincipled Ministers playing on the ignorance of the public might still make a party cry of justice to Ireland, and carry measures which they knew

If Mr Gladstone does not secure and retain the "Irish vote," it will certainly not be due to any failure upon "( his part to conciliate it by an implicit and childlike confidence in the good intentions of the Irish leaders. The latter have given their countenance to the "Plan of Campaign," and have expressed themselves, even within a few days, in language quite incompatible with a desire for that union of love which Mr Gladstone expects from the adoption of Home Rule. Yet he actually has the courage (to use no harsher word) to tell the people of Derby, that "as the Nationalists of Ireland have attained greater power their moderation has become conspicuous; as they now command an overwhelming majority, all ground of suspicion of a desire to break up the obligations which bind the occupier to the owner, which bind the debtor to the creditor, has disappeared, and there has disappeared all ground for stating that these gentlemen as a body-I believe I might say that any one of useither contemplates or desires to dismember the empire, or to weaken in any particular those bonds by which it is united." In other words, Mr Gladstone would have us believe that the Nationalist denunciations of "British rule" and the "Saxon" with which we have been nauseated for years past, were of no meaning and significance; and that his magic wand has converted "Nationalists," "Fenians," "Invincibles," and all the motley following of Mr Parnell, into loyal and lawabiding citizens, who only regard

passing joke, and whose recent language in America against Great Britain, strange though it sounds in our ears, is only the expression of a long-restrained but exuberant loyalty.

Within the limits of this article it is impossible to deal with the many other points at which Mr Gladstone glances in his somewhat discursive "Review." He indig

nantly declares that "the man who can write upon the history of the Union without touching on Lord Fitzwilliam and his Government, is certainly not its historian." But Mr Gladstone forgets that although he, in defiance of history and of much authority on the subject, chooses to attribute to the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam all the evils which have since befallen Ireland, those who do not read history with his eyes take the somewhat more sober and practical view, that the two months' viceroyalty of Lord Fitzwilliam was but one short scene in the historical drama of the period, and, having occurred more than five years before the passing of the Act of Union, need not necessarily have been treated of in a book which purported to deal only with events immediately bearing upon that measure.

Mr Gladstone, again, puts forward the theory that Lord Fitzwilliam's recall converted the "United Irishmen" "from a constitutional and in the main open into a seditious and secret society, entirely ignoring the fact that the publication of the journal of Wolfe Tone has absolutely demolished this theory, and shows the "United Irishmen" to have been a treasonable society from its very conception. He heaps up charges against the

British Government in ingenious sentences which it would require pages to answer as they should be answered; and whether it be civilians or soldiers, it is sufficient that they were British to ensure the utter condemnation of their conduct by the ex-Prime Minister of Great Britain. I will not be so disrespectful to Mr Gladstone as to attribute to him the "purblindness " of which he accuses Dr Ingram (p. 458); but either this or some other mental misfortune appears to have imbued him at once with a prejudice against his own countrymen, and an inability to take more than a very narrow and one-sided view of the connection between Great Britain and Ireland. Speaking of the competency of the Irish Parliament to have voted the Union, he alludes to that legislation as "voting away the public life and independence of a nation." Such a description is, to my mind, wholly inaccurate and misleading. I desire to speak of Irishmen with the greatest respect. I have Irish relations and many Irish friends. I know the Irish to be of an impulsive, an affectionate, and an impressionable nature, and I regard their loyalty to the Catholic faith, through good report and evil report, and through centuries of persecution, as something which must touch the heart of every man who has a heart to be touched. But to speak of them as a nation in the sense in which Mr Gladstone uses the word, only leads to deception and delusion. It is necessary to go back to prehistoric times in Ireland for even the pretence of a united nation such as held its own for so many centuries in Scotland. In sober truth, it is only of recent date that this claim to a separate antiBritish nationality has been ad

VOL. CXLII.-NO. DCCCLXV.

vanced, and a more true description of the Union would have been that it was a measure introduced for the purpose of drawing more closely together, for their mutual advantage, different portions of the same nation which were only divided by a narrow strip of sea. The very leaders of the Nationalist party to-day have more of Saxon than Celtic blood in their veins, and to a very large extent the population of Ireland is as British as that of Great Britain. But even if this can be denied, how can that Act be said to "vote. away the public life and independence of a nation," which simply conferred upon that nation a similarity of parliamentary power and privilege to that already enjoyed by the sister nations which owned the sway of the same sovereign? The ludicrous inconsistency of Mr Gladstone and his followers upon this particular point of the Irish controversy was never more plainly shown than in Lord Rosebery's speech at Castle Douglas on the 20th October. Whilst vehemently attacking the Unionist suggestion that the same arguments which would justify a separate Irish legislature would also justify a legislature for Ulster, separate from the other three provinces of Ireland, Lord Rosebery was unlucky enough to pitch upon Italy as a source from which to strengthen his argument. He recalled the fact that Piedmont, a comparatively small and poor country, had not been afraid to unite herself with Naples, Lombardy, Tuscany, and Rome, but had in fact "very much originated and controlled the whole movement for unifying Italy." Lord Rosebery does not appear to see that his argument is far more applicable to the case of Ireland, which, instead of seeking a separa3 в

tion, so far as her legislature is concerned, from England, Scotland, and Wales, should follow the example of Piedmont and all the other Italian States, and find her glory.and her strength in "unifying" the empire of which she is a portion and in the greatness of which she shares. This advice, freely given by Mr Gladstone to the Italian States, should not be forgotten by those to whom he now tenders counsel the reverse and opposite.

Herein lies the fundamental difference between Mr Gladstone's new creed and that of Mr Pitt and all the great statesmen who have followed him. Their aim, object, and desire, was not only to strengthen and consolidate the British empire, but in so doing to raise Ireland to an equality with Great Britain, and to give her a share in the power, the glory, and the government of that empire which, without union, she could never have enjoyed. Mr Gladstone-following the lead of the allies whom he has of late so unhappily adopted-is determined to see in the projects of Mr Pitt nothing but a desire to destroy the nationality of Ireland and deprive her of her independence. To him, despite of fact and proof, "British" rule in Ireland is the rule of the foreigner; the British Government is a foreign executive." And any loyal subject who asserts the pure and patriotic motives of Mr Pitt, and ventures to question the somewhat peculiar readings of history which Mr Gladstone has determined to adopt upon Irish questions, must be prepared for twenty-five pages of unmitigated abuse, and to be branded before his fellow-men with the awful titles of "fabulist" and "historiaster!"

I feel that an apology is due to

my readers for having omitted to point out several other weak points in Mr Gladstone's review; but my excuse must be, first, that they are too numerous to be briefly dealt with; and secondly, that they are often too palpable to need demonstration.

For instance, Mr Gladstone condemns in strong terms "the announcement by the British Government, after the Union had been rejected by the British Parliament, of its intention to reiterate the proposal again and again till it should be adopted." This is an unfair exaggeration of the "announcement" which Lord Castlereagh made after the hostile division; namely, that it had been the object of the Government to let the people know that it was their decided opinion that a legislative union was the only measure which could heal the distractions of the country and secure its connection with Great Britain; that in that idea they were unalterably fixed: he was not, however, desirous of forcing the measure with any precipitation, nor against the wish of the House. If, however, the state of the country or the public mind should change, he thought, in such a case, he should be justified in resuming the subject.

Mr

Again, Mr Gladstone boasts that the opponents of the Union "challenged an appeal to the constituencies upon the question by a dissolution," which was "persistently refused by the Government." Massey, in his 'History of England' (vol. iv. p. 414), disposes of this absurdity by a single sentence: "The appeal to such a constituency as that which returned the Irish House of Commons would have been a mere mockery."

Then Mr Gladstone makes much of the affair of Colonel Cole, who, says he, was sent to his regiment

at Malta," and "Government refused to grant him the nominal office of the escheatorship of Munster, which would have enabled him to vacate his seat, for which an opponent of the Union would have been returned." The facts are true, but the gloss put upon them is somewhat unfair. Lord Cornwallis speaks of Colonel Cole having just received "a military favour of the King," and thought it "rather unreasonable" that he should desire to introduce into Parliament "the particular opponent of the Union" whom he intended to replace him in his seat. Mr Ross tells us (vol. iii. p. 99) that "the escheatorship," unlike the Chiltern Hundreds in England, was "considered as a favour which the Lord Lieutenant might grant or withhold on considering the circumstances under which the application was made." In this instance the question was raised in the Irish Parliament, and the matter having been referred to the Duke of Portland, he intimated that in future the English rule had better be followed; but Lord Cornwallis evidently acted in perfect good faith, and according to what he believed to be, and which probably was, precedent.

I will only further remark that in his criticisms upon the number of troops maintained in Ireland, and other strictures upon the British Government, Mr Gladstone entirely forgets or ignores that a rebellion had just taken place, accompanied by a foreign invasion from a country with which Great Britain was still at war; and that although at this distance of time it is easy to minimise the danger, and may be popular with his new allies to deny or excuse the excesses of the rebels (p. 466), yet at the period of the passing of the Union the danger was still near, and the

memory of the excesses was too recent to have justified the Government in taking every precaution to prevent the recurrence either of one or the other. Indeed it is difficult to read without resentful indignation the language in which Mr Gladstone writes of the rebellion of 1798. He says: "It is totally untrue that the barbarities of the revolted Irish fully equalled those inflicted upon them," and asserts that "the commanders of the rebels denounced all excess,' whilst "the ascendancy men, even in the hearing of the Viceroy, exulted in blood," &c., &c.; and that after the rebellion was put down, the system of intimidating the Irish nation was actively upheld by "robbery, devastation, rape, torture, and murder, practised continually by the armed forces of the Government, together with the civil authorities." This is one of those statements in which there is just sufficient of truth to make the falsehood more mischievous and therefore more wicked. It is unhappily quite true that those whom Mr Gladstone calls "the ascendancy men practised severity and cruelty in and after the suppression of the rebellion. But it must be remembered that the provocation had been great and grievous. doubt there were individual instances in which the "commanders of the rebels denounced excess." Mr Froude gives us one in the case of Bagenal Harvey, who "swore that he would shoot any man who murdered a prisoner," and who was promptly deposed from his command for sentiments so obnoxious to the rebels. But the evidence of the savage and bloodthirsty nature of the rebellion, of the barbarous murders committed by the rebels, and the hateful cruelty practised by them from

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