ion of the Treaty of
Union between England and Ireland. The two countries do not yet form an
united nation. The Irish people are, if not more wretched (for the whole
European world has made progress, and Ireland with it), yet more
conscious of wretchedness; and Irish disaffection to England is, if not
deeper, more wide-spread than in 1800. An Act meant by its authors to be
the source of the prosperity and concord which, though slowly, followed
upon the union with Scotland, has not made Ireland rich, has not put an
end to Irish lawlessness, has not terminated the feud between
Protestants and Catholics, has not raised the position of Irish tenants,
has not taken away the causes of Irish discontent, and has therefore not
removed Irish disloyalty. This is the indictment which can fairly be
brought against the Act of Union. It is, however, of importance to
notice that the main charges to which the Act of Union is liable are
negative. It has not removed (its foes, say that it has not mitigated)
great evils; but the mass of ills for which the Union is constantly made
chargeable were in existence before the days of Pitt or Cornwallis.
Destitution, sectarian animosities, harsh evictions, met by savage
outrages, the terror of secret societies, the stern enforcement of law
which to the people represented anything but justice, are phenomena of
Irish society, which, as they existed before the Volunteers established
the Parliamentary independence of the country, and continued to exist
when Ireland was subject to no laws but those passed by an Irish
Parliament, cannot be attributed to the Act of Union. That enactment
introduced a purely political change. It could not, except very
indirectly, either increase or remove evils which it did not affect to
touch. To two charges its authors are indeed, with more or less of
justice, liable; they committed the intellectual error of supposing that
a change or improvement in the form of the Constitution would remove
evils due to social and economical causes; they committed the moral
error of thinking that a beneficial enactment might allowably be passed
by means which outraged all the best moral feeling of Ireland. Their
mistakes are worth notice. England is again told that a Constitutional
change is the remedy for Irish misery. Ethical considerations (in this
case the moral rights of a loyal minority and the legal rights of Irish
landlords) are, it is again intimated, to be held of slight account