toring at least the rule of law and peace in a distracted country,
fancied that the corruption of the legislature might be counted a low
price to pay for protecting the mass of the population from the rule or
the vengeance of a faction, they committed a grave moral error. But
their mistake was more pardonable than it seems to modern critics, and
the lesson which it teaches--that you cannot base a just policy upon a
foundation of iniquity--is one which the modern censors of Pitt may well
lay to heart. However this may be, the transactions which discredited
the passing of the Act of Union give no ground for repealing it, and,
except to a rhetorician in want of an _argumentum ad hominem_, it will
never appear that the philosophic historian who maintains that the
Treaty of Union was ill-conceived and premature, contradicts the
political philosopher who contends that to repeal the Union would be not
to cancel but to aggravate the evils of an historical error. The
considerations which recommend or require the maintenance of the Union
are often forgotten, but are obvious.

[Sidenote: Reasons for maintaining the Union.]

The support of the Union is, after all, let controversialists say what
they like, the policy which in fact holds the field, and it is (strange
though the assertion may appear) on the advocates of innovation, not on
the supporters of things as they are, that lies the burden of making out
their case. A fundamental alteration in the constitution of the realm is
in itself no light matter, and any man who has eyes to see or ears to
hear may easily convince himself that the creation of an Irish
Parliament must be the beginning, not the end, of a revolution. Dublin
is not the only city in the United Kingdom which has contained an
Assembly which not only occasionally denied, but during the whole of its
existence never admitted, the sovereignty of the Parliament at
Westminster; and in the present state of the world it is inconceivable
that Irish autonomy--if such be the proper term--should not excite or
justify claims for local independence which would unloose the ties which
bind together the huge fabric of the British Empire.

[Sidenote: Strengthens the English Crown.]

The Union again of England and Ireland has increased, as its relaxation
would of necessity diminish, the power of the central government. That
the Treaty of Union has, disappointing and even harmful as some of its
results have been, formed a guarante