anger from Ireland. Pitt's temper was of too
statesmanlike a mould to rest content with the mere suppression of
insurrection or with the system of terrorism which for the moment held
the country down. His disgust at "the bigoted fury of Irish Protestants"
had backed Lord Cornwallis in checking the reprisals of his troops and
of the Orangemen; but the hideous cruelty which he was forced to witness
brought about a firm resolve to put an end to the farce of
"Independence" which left Ireland helpless in such hands. The political
necessity for a union of the two islands had been brought home to every
English statesman by the course of the Irish Parliament during the
disputes over the Regency. While England repelled the claims of the
Prince of Wales to the Regency as of right, the legislature of Ireland
admitted them. As the only union left between the two peoples since the
concession of legislative independence was their obedience to a common
ruler, such an act might conceivably have ended in their entire
severance; and the sense of this danger secured a welcome in England for
the proposal which Pitt made at the opening of 1799 to unite the two
Parliaments. The opposition of the Irish borough-mongers was naturally
stubborn and determined, and when the plan was introduced into the
Parliament at Dublin, it was only saved from rejection by a single
vote. But with men like these it was a sheer question of gold; and their
assent was bought with a million in money, and with a liberal
distribution of pensions and peerages. Base and shameless as were such
means, Pitt may fairly plead that they were the only means by which the
bill for the Union could have been passed. As the matter was finally
arranged in June 1800, one hundred Irish members became part of the
House of Commons at Westminster, and twenty-eight temporal peers chosen
by their fellows for life, with four spiritual peers succeeding in a
fixed rotation, took their seats in the House of Lords. Commerce between
the two countries was freed from all restrictions, and every trading
privilege of the one thrown open to the other, while taxation was
proportionately distributed between the two peoples.

[Sidenote: France and the Coalition.]

While the Union was being pushed slowly forward, the struggle abroad was
passing through strange vicissitudes. At the opening of 1799 the efforts
of the new coalition were crowned with success in every quarter. Though
Naples had been turned i