Parliament perfectly prepared to pass it. But the opposition of the
King and a question of patronage produced a fatal division and led to
the recall of the Viceroy. The passions aroused by the rebellion
greatly increased the difficulties of admitting Catholics to a
separate Parliament, but there is clear evidence that at the time of
the Union the Irish Protestants were in favour of their admission into
the Imperial one. The dispositions of the King were well known, but it
was believed that, if the scheme of Pitt was submitted to him as the
matured policy of a united Cabinet, he must have yielded. It is well
known how the plan was prematurely revealed; how Pitt resigned office
when the King refused his consent; how the agitation of the question
threw the King into an access of insanity; and how Pitt then promised
that he would not again raise it during the reign. Pitt's conduct on
this occasion is, and probably always will be, differently judged.
There can be but one opinion of its calamitous effect upon Irish
history.

Ninety years have passed since the Union, and the conditions of
Ireland have completely changed. The whole system of religious
disqualification and commercial disability has long since passed away.
Every path has been thrown open, and English professions, as well as
the great Colonial and Indian services, are crowded with Irishmen. The
Established Church no longer exists. Representation has been placed on
a broadly democratic basis, giving Ireland, however, an absurdly
disproportioned weight in the representation of the kingdom, and its
poorest and most backward districts an absurdly disproportioned weight
in the representation of Ireland. Finally, an attempt has been made to
put down agrarian agitation by legislation to which there is no real
parallel in English history, and some parts of which would have been
impossible under the Constitution of the United States. Landlords who
possessed by the clearest title known to English law the most absolute
ownership of their estates have been converted into mere
rent-chargers. Tenants who entered upon their tenancies under formal
written contracts for limited periods have been rooted for ever on the
soil. Rents have been reduced by judicial sentence, with complete
disregard both to previous contracts and to market value, and the
legal owner has had no option of refusing the change and re-entering
on the occupation of his land. A scheme of purchase, too, based u