Supposing that they had "proceeded as if refused," Great Britain had at this moment but five thousand disposable troops, to meet a hundred thousand volunteers, and two hundred pieces of artillery.

In answer to the Lord Lieutenant's most gracious speech of the 27th, Mr. Grattan, in the fulness of his heart, moved an equally gracious address, accepting England's concession of the repeal question as full and satisfactory; and assuring his Majesty that

"No constitutional question between the two nations will any longer exist, which can interrupt their harmony; that Great Britain, as she has approved of our firmness, so may she rely on our affection; and that we remember and do repeat our determination to stand or fall with the British nation."

The loyal and grateful address did not, strange to say, pass unanimously. There were two perverse, hard-headed lawyers in the house-Sir Samuel Bradstreet and Mr. David Walshe-with obstinate wills of their own, who, in the midst of the general enthusiasm, presumed to doubt the non-existence of any remaining "constitutional question between the two nations which might interrupt their harmony," and carried their doubts to the ungracious length of dividing the house against those particular words. But what was a minority of two, among so many rejoicing and jubilant patriots? The address was triumphantly carried, and the house adjourned amid the acclamations of a loyal, trusting, and believing people.

This eventful repeal session closed, on the 27th of July, with an eloquent Lord Lieutenant's speech, congratulatory, commendatory, and affectionately hortatory. It perorates thus:

"What I would most earnestly press upon you, as that upon which your domestic peace and happiness, and the prosperity of the empire at this moment most immediately depend, is to cultivate and diffuse those sentiments of affectión and confidence which are now happily restored between the two kingdoms. Convince the people in your several districts, as you are yourselves convinced, that every cause of past jealousies and discontents is finally removed; that both countries have pledged their good faith to each other, and that their best security will be an inviolable adherence to that compact; that the implicit reliance which Great Britain has reposed on the honour, generosity, and candour of Ireland, engages your national character to a return of sentiments equally liberal and enlarged. Convince them that the two kingdoms are now ONE; indissolubly connected in unity of constitution and unity of interests; that the danger and security, the prosperity and calamity, of the one must equally affect the other that they stand or fall together."

Eighteen years from that day, this Duke of Portland was found speaking and voting for another sort of "unity" between the two kingdoms.

It was a pleasant faith, while it lasted, that "every cause of past jealousies and discontents was finally removed." Yet was there not something, after all, in what shrewd Lord Camden said, on seeing one of those grand Belfast Volunteer Reviews?—" Keep it up, keep it up; for, rely on it, ENGLAND WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU."

CHAPTER IV.

THE LEGISLATIVE INDEPENDENCE-LAWYERS' DOUBTS CONTINUEDREPEAL AND RENUNCIATION-REFORM AGITATION-NATIONAL CONVENTION OF 1783-COMMERCIAL PROPOSITIONS-THE CREEPING, INCIPIENT UNION-THE REGENCY QUESTION-THE DISAPPOINTMENT.

In the summer of 1782, the state of Ireland seemed to promise a glorious future of freedom, virtue, and prosperity. Rich in all the raw material of national power and greatness; lightly taxed, and but moderately indebted; her industry liberated from the shackles, and her self-respect secured from the insult of foreign legislation; her parliament patriotic, and her people united; Catholic and Protestant for a while forgetting, the one his servitude and the other his ascendency, in the amity of a common citizenship; her volunteer army superseding all other army, doing the work at once of military and police, keeping the peace at home, and averting war from abroad-holding France in check, and extorting concession from England; emancipated from the control of the British legislature, while still sharing the protection of the British crown, Independent Ireland seemed about to take her place in the great family of European nations, under circumstances every way favourable to a vigorous and healthy national life. By what wretched fatality it was that all these fair hopes were blighted, we are now to show. We have seen Ireland and her Volunteers in the hour of their great success; we are now to witness the yet greater disappointment by which that success was promptly followed; from which we shall pass on, in the next chapter, to those renewed efforts of baffled and defeated patriotism which ultimately produced the Rebellion of 1798.

Those "lawyers' doubts" which we mentioned in the last chapter were not long confined to the lawyers-they made rapid progress among the people, and took strong hold of the popular mind. The national rejoicings and thanksgivings at the "final adjustment" of May, 1782, were not well over before it began to be more than suspected that the final adjustment was no adjustment at all; that the finality was a mere and simple cheat, with which the craft of a foreign cabinet and the treachery of a domestic legislature had conspired to abuse the confidence of a too credulous people. Great Britain had repealed the act of 6 George I., declaratory of her right to make laws for Ireland. But what of that? said the lawyers; as that act was not enacting, but only declaratory-declaratory of an assumed pre-existing state of the law and constitution as regarded the relations of the two countries-to repeal it, to withdraw the declaration, was merely bringing matters back to where they were at the time the declaration was first made; and it would always remain competent to Great Britain to renew the declaration. The operation of the Sixth of George I. was not to alter the law, but only to declare it; therefore the repeal of the Sixth of George I. did not alter the law, but only left it undeclared. Great Britain had not disclaimed her usurped and assumed right of legislating for Ireland; she had only, for convenience' sake, scored out from her statute-book a particular form of words asserting the right, leaving it open to her to re-assert the right, at such time and in such form as she might think proper. So that Ireland had gained simply nothing by this

repeal; it only put the question back to where it stood in the fifth year of the reign of George I. Great Britain ought to have disclaimed the alleged right to legislate for Ireland, to have renounced it altogether as a usurpation, null and void ab initio.*

These legal doubts were the occasion of a popular and party schism, which was of the worst possible consequence to the peace and freedom of Ireland, which marred the great victory of 1782, weakened, by dividing, the power of the people and their leaders, strengthened the hands of their oppressors, foreign and domestic, and left uncured and incurable those discontents and causes of discontent which finally exploded in the Rebellion of 1798. This question of repeal or renunciation completely spoiled the first year of Ireland's independence. It divided the Volunteers,† it divided the people, it divided the people's best friends in parliament; it brought to a head the mischievous animosity between Flood and Grattan-the very men of all others, on whose union and mutual co-operation the best interests of Ireland then depended; it gave the old discomfited court faction a little breathing time for self-recovery-it did mischief, and only mischief. more barren and unprofitable controversy than this of repeal and renunciation never was. It made a curious case in legal and constitutional metaphysics, but was utterly void of practical utility. No doubt, Flood and the people were right in holding simple repeal an inadequate guarantee for Irish independence, but Grattan and the parliament were right too, in holding that, if repeal would not do, nothing would do. The truth is, the independence of Ireland rested not on any act of repeal, or of renunciation either, but on her own union and strength; and whatever marred that union, and impaired that strength, went to the undoing of all that had been done by the struggle of the preceding four years. The futility of the controversy was sufficiently apparent when, in the session of 1783, in consequence of some new grounds of dissatisfaction having accidentally arisen to re-open the legal question between the countries, Great Britain did, almost without a debate, pass the much-desired renunciatory act (23 George III., c. 28), by which it was declared and enacted that "the right claimed by the people of Ireland to be bound only by laws enacted by his Majesty and the parliament of that kingdom, in all cases whatsoever, should be, and was thereby declared to be established and ascertained for ever, and should at no time thereafter be questioned or questionable.” Even then Ireland was not satisfied. The simple-repeal party were mortified at the triumph of their opponents, whose objections to the original arrangement were thus constructively allowed and confirmed by the British legislature; and the renunciation party thought that the new act did not go far enough, and made much work for themselves in picking holes in the very instrument that seemed designed for the perpetual and irrevocable confirmation of their liberties.

In truth, nothing could have satisfied any reflecting and moderately sceptical Irishman, that the liberty of his country was assured by what

* See the arguments of the Recorder, Sir Samuel Bradstreet, and Mr. David Walshe, in the debate of May, 1782. Mr. Flood, likewise, was one of the objectors.

On the 3rd of August, 1782, the Belfast volunteer delegates debated for eleven hours on a clause in their address to their reviewing general, Lord Charlemont, expressive of "full satisfaction at the repeal act. A majority of two expunged the clause.

British ministers or British parliaments might say or do. The case, from the very nature of it, did not allow of such satisfaction being either given or received. The adjustment of May, 1782, had been declared "final." The parliament in Dublin had voted that "no constitutional question between the two nations would any longer exist which could interrupt their harmony," and had responded with acclamations to the viceregal assurance, that "every cause of jealousies and discontents was finally removed." It was pleasant to think that—but, alas! the thing could not be. The repeal act of 1782 was itself a most potent cause of jealousies and discontents; and not seven years elapsed without producing two constitutional questions of first-rate magnitude and importance, which essentially interrupted the harmony of the countries, and indicated an anomaly in their relations, only to be solved either by separation or incorporate union. Finality there could not be in an arrangement which the essentially and habitually weaker of two neighbouring and closely connected countries had extorted by menace, under favour of a most singular combination of circumstances, of brief duration and almost impossible recurrence, from the essentially and habitually stronger. The crisis would pass away; the essential and habitual would prevail over the casual and accidental; and the first-rate power would regain, under some new name or form, its old ascendency over the second-rate power. Keep it up, keep it up; for, rely on it, England will never forgive you,”there was more of the practical philosophy of politics in this, than in whole libraries of disquisition on the respective merits of renunciation and repeal. As long as Ireland could and would "keep it up "-keep up that spirit and power of armed union which had won her independence-so long her independence was safe; and as soon as Ireland ceased to keep it up, her independence was gone. From the time that the two countries began to return to their old and habitual mutual relations of superiority and inferiority-from that hour would England begin gradually to regain that which she had suddenly lost.

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The lawyers were quite right in their doubts, though not exactly on lawyer grounds. Discontents and jealousies" in abundance did remain. No declarations, no repeal or renunciation acts, nor anything else that a British ministry or parliament might say or do, could ever make the independence complete and reciprocal. Great Britain, the stronger of the two, had been humbled by Ireland, the weaker; and Great Britain could not but be jealous, and Ireland suspicious. We may say, in general, that the adjustment of 1782 never could be regarded by any British statesman as final; and there is plenty of evidence, in particular, to show that it was not so regarded by the statesmen by whom it was made. Thus, during the month of June in that year, we find the Marquis of Rockingham writing to Lord Charlemont

"There are matters which may want adjustment in the new state in which England and Ireland now stand. I heartily wish that no time was lost on either side, in accelerating the adjustment of any such matters which might hereafter cause any disputes or misunderstandings, and that this happy moment of friendship, and cordiality, and confidence between the countries was made use of to form and arrange plans of mutual and reciprocal support."

On which Lord Charlemont, not a little perplexed and annoyed at the

prospect of more "adjustment" being needed, writes back to the Marquis

"The paragraph in your lordship's letter, where you mention that in the new state in which England and Ireland now stand there are matters which may want adjustment, I do not entirely comprehend. That all future disputes or misunderstandings should be obviated, is undoubtedly a principle of which no man can disapprove; but till your lordship shall be pleased particularly to specify the means by which this great object may be attained, it is impossible for me to form any judgment or to give any opinion."*

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The value of the vice-regal and parliamentary assurance that no constitutional question between the two countries would any longer exist which could interrupt their harmony," may be further tested by a reference to the correspondence of the statesmen by whom the "final adjustment" was devised and effected. On the 6th of June, 1782-just ten days after the Irish Commons had voted the non-existence of any such outstanding constitutional question-the Duke of Portland writes thus to Lord Shelburne :

"I have the best reason to hope that I shall soon be enabled to transmit to you the sketch or outlines of an act of parliament to be adopted by the legislatures of the respective kingdoms, by which the superintending power and supremacy of Great Britain in all matters of state and general commerce will be virtually and effectually acknowledged; and that Ireland will adopt every such regulation as may be judged necessary by Great Britain for the better ordering and securing her trade and commerce with foreign nations or her own colonies and dependencies. I am flattered with the most positive assurances from * * * and *** of their support in carrying such a bill through both houses of parliament, and I think it most advisable to bring it to perfection at the present moment."

That is to say 66 he had every reason to hope" that Ireland would surrender, at that present moment, the very pith and marrow of the independence which she had so recently and so laboriously won. Lord Shelburne, on the 9th of the same month, writes, much delighted, in reply,

"I have lived in the most anxious expectation of some such measure offering itself. * * * Let the two kingdoms be one-which can only be by Ireland now acknowledging the superintending power and supremacy to be where nature has placed it, in precise and unam biguous terms. I am sure I need not inculcate on your Grace the importance of words in an act which must decide on the happiness of ages, particularly in what regards contribution and trade, subjects most likely to come into frequent question."

The agreeable and flattering prospect was, however, soon clouded over. On the 22nd, the Duke writes back to Lord Shelburne :—

***

"The disappointment and mortification I suffer, by the unexpected change in those dispositions which had authorised me to entertain the hopes I have, perhaps too sanguinely, expressed in my letter of the 6th instant, must not prevent me from acquainting you that for the present those expectations must be given up. By the accounts of the events of these three or four days, and by the timidity and jealousy of the first people in this country, it is clear that any injudicious or offensive measures may be prevented; but that any attempt to conciliate the mind of this nation to any such measure, as I intimated the hope of, would at this moment be delusive and impossible."+

Here were the first signs of the creeping, incipient Union, as Grattan afterwards called it in the bitterness of his heart, when he found his mis

* Hardy's 'Life of the Earl of Charlemont," vol. ii., pp. 37–42. + See Plowden's "Historical Review," vol. i., p. 611, Note. ̧