Catholics believed themselves to be consenting to the Union on a vital condition which was not fulfilled; and thus, as we shall see, did the Union turn out to be no more of a "final settlement of Ireland than any preceding arrangement.

Imputations of other kinds of inducement, charges of "profligacy and corruption," were freely thrown out in the Irish parliament-house and elsewhere, in the first months of 1800: and from that day to this, the calmest approvers of the Irish Union have been observed to make reservations in regard to the means by which the assent of the Irish to the measure was obtained. Perhaps there was secret corruption: but it seems also probable that the surprising change of mind manifested by the Dublin parliament between the sessions of 1799 and 1800 might suggest suspicions of bribery, while in fact the members were only exhibiting another instance of the passion, short-sightedness, and consequent fluctuation, which too often characterized their proceedings. In 1799, the Irish parliament assented to the English parliamentary resolutions in favour of the Union by a majority of only one vote. In the next year, the majorities on the same side were large; and in March, the two Houses agreed in an address to the King, assenting to the wisdom of the measure. Some members of both Houses, on both sides the Channel, implored the government to grant such delay as should be necessary for ascertaining the real feelings of the Irish nation on the subject: but this was refused by overwhelming majorities; and the Act of Union received the royal assent on the 2nd of July, 1800.

By this act, Great Britain and Ireland were henceforth to constitute one kingdom, and to be called "The United Kingdom” accordingly. There was to be one parliament : and in this parliament the spiritual peers of Ireland, and twenty-eight temporal peers, elected for life by the peers of Ireland, were to sit in the House of Lords, and one hundred members in the House of Commons. The Protestant churches of the two countries were to be united. The two countries were to be on equal terms as regarded trade and navigation, and treaties with foreign powers. The laws and courts of both kingdoms were to remain

unaltered. From the date of the Union, all Acts of Parliament were to extend to Ireland, unless special exception were made. The succession to the imperial crown was to be the same as heretofore to the two kingdoms. It was on the 2nd of August, 1800, that the Irish Parliament met for the last time; and there is something affecting to those who have lived to watch the course of Irish affairs, in reading, at the end of half a century, the happy anticipations of the Viceroy, that, under the protection of Divine Providence, these united kingdoms would remain, in all future ages, the fairest monument of the reign in which their union took place. On the last day of the year and of the century, the King closed the last session of the British Parliament, which was now to become the Imperial Parliament. The occasion was indeed a mere adjournment for three weeks, as the House of Commons was in the midst of the business which at the time chiefly occupied the King's mind, and which he was impatient for the legislature to resume-the passing of measures restrictive on the use of flour, on account of the scarcity. Early in the year, a bill had passed which forbade the sale of bread that had been baked less than twenty-four hours. Next, laws were made which bestowed bounties on the importation of corn and of fish; subjected millers to supervision by the excise, and to a legal rate of profits; and stopped the distilleries, to save the barley. Other measures of the same tendency were so interesting to the King and Ministry, that we find no mention in the royal speech of the mighty event which was now to take place, except in a parenthetical kind of way -as a reason why there must be some delay about the Bread Bills, but no reason for the delay being a long one. But that the speech stands before our eyes complete in the records of the time, we could hardly believe that such could be the close of the series of British parliaments, on the eve of the admission of the great Irish element.

While there were some who objected to the Union altogether, as abolishing the nationality of Ireland, and who were convinced that nothing but British force and ministerial corruption could have carried the measure, there were other Irish patriots who entered protests against the

incompleteness of the change. They would have had the Viceroyalty abolished; and also all custom-houses on the opposite coasts of the Irish Channel; and they would have transferred their two Houses of Parliament complete into the British Legislature. The King thought the Viceroyalty might be abolished: and probably every one now wishes there had been free trade, from the beginning, between the two countries: but, as for other points, the political fusion must stop somewhere, if the Irish were to preserve anything distinctive at all, or to enter into the Union with any good will: and it is, in such cases, for an after time to perceive and decide where the fusion should stop. As will presently appear, there was something more pressing than this which had been neglected, and which made the subject of the Union the bitterest and the most disastrous that filled the minds of our statesmen for a long course of years.

It is common to us to hear and to say that the temper of the times, fifty years ago, was warlike, though, in fact, the people were beginning to have, and to express, a passionate desire for peace. To say that the temper of the times was warlike gives no idea, to us who can scarcely remember war times, of the spirit of violence, and the barbaric habits of thought and life, which then prevailed. Everything seems, in the records, to have suffered a war change. The gravest annalists, the most educated public men, called the First Consul "the Corsican murderer," and so forth, through the whole vocabulary of abuse. Nelson's first precept of professional morality was to hate a Frenchman as you would the devil. Government rule took the form of coercion; and popular discontent that of rebellion; and suffering that of riot. The passionate order of crime showed itself slaughterous: the mean kind exercised itself in peculation of military and naval provisions. Affliction took its character from the war. Tens of thousands of widows, and hundreds of thousands of orphans, were weeping or starving in the midst of society; and among the starving were a multitude of the families of employed sailors, who were sent off on long voyages, while their pay was three or four years in arrear. The mutiny, which spread half round our

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coasts, was a natural, almost a necessary consequence. Because it was suppressed," it does not follow that the feelings connected with it were extinguished. In Wilberforce's Diary we find an expression of strong regret that "the officers do not love the sailors," such being, he observes, the consequence of fear entering into such a relation-fear on the part of superiors. The sufferings from bad seasons, again, were aggravated by a taxation growing heavier every year, and money running shorter every day-all on account of the war. The very sports

of the time took their character from the same class of influences. The world went to see reviews, at which the King (when well) appeared on horseback. Then there were illuminations for victories: and funerals of prodigious grandeur, when military and naval officers of eminence were to be buried in places of honour. There were presentations of jewelled swords, in provincial cities as well as in London: and, from the metropolitan theatre to the puppet-show, there were celebrations and representations of combats by sea or land. The inhabitants of towns came to their windows and doors at the tramp of cavalry; ladies presented colours to regiments; and children played at soldiers on the village green. Prayers and thanksgivings in church and chapel-services utterly confounding now to the moral sense of a time which has leisure to see that Christianity is a religion of brotherly love-then met with a loud response which had in it a hard tone of worldly passion: and from church and chapel, the congregation took a walk to see the Sunday drill. Manufacturers and tradesmen contested vehemently for army and navy contracts; and the bankrupt list in the Gazette showed a large proportion of dependents on army and navy contractors who could not get paid. If the vices and miseries of the time took their character from the war, there was a fully corresponding manifestation of virtue. From Pitt at the head, down to the humblest peasant or the most timid woman in the remotest corner of the kingdom, all who were worthy were animated by the appeals of the times, and magnanimity came out in all directions. The courage was not only in the Nelsons and the Wellesleys: it was in the soul of the

sailor's love, and the grey-haired father of the soldier, when their hearts beat at the thought of battle and the threat of invasion. The self-denial was found all abroad, from the Pitt who could respectfully support an Addington Ministry, and a Wilberforce who curtailed his luxuries, and exceeded his income by 3,000l. in one year, to feed the poor in the scarcity, down to the sister who dismissed. her brother to the wars with a smile, and the operative who worked extra hours when he should have slept-all sustained alike by the thought that they were obeying a call of their country. It was a phase of the national life which should be preserved in vivid representation, for its own value, as well as because it may be a curious spectacle to a future age.

CHAPTER II.

Mr. Pitt-The Catholic Question in the Cabinet-Proposed Change of Ministry-Illness of the King-The Northern Confederacy-English Fleet in the Baltic-Battle of Copenhagen-Armistice-Pacific Convention-Expedition to Egypt-Battle of Abookeer-Death of Abercromby-French Evacuation of Egypt-Mr. Pitt's Resignation -Mr. Addington-Peace Negotiations- Preliminaries signedTerms of the Treaty of Amiens-Definitive Treaty signed-[1801-2.] THE first days of the new century-not the first years or months, but the first days-present a picture of the faults and weaknesses of statesmanship, which will make it a wonder through all historic time that the British nation preserved its place in the world. After putting together the facts yielded by the various records of the time, and thus obtaining a clear view of the intrigues, the selfishness, the ignorance, the foolishness, the mutual deceit and misunderstandings, of the parties on and about the throne, the student of history draws a long breath of thankfulness and surprise that the nation should have escaped falling into a political chaos, and thus becoming an easy prey to foreign foes. Some parts of the story remain obscure; but the greater portion has of late become