e
founders of the United Irishmen, then in exile in America, wrote home to
his father: "I congratulate you on the report which spreads here that a
Union is intended. In that measure I see the downfall of one of the most
corrupt assemblies, I believe, that ever existed."[10]

It is little wonder that men of good will in Ireland prayed to be
delivered from such a Parliament. Molyneux, the first of the Irish
Parliamentary patriots, whose book, "The Case of Ireland's being
Governed by Laws made in England Stated," was burnt by the common
hangman, pleaded indeed for a reformed and independent Parliament, but
only because fair representation in the English Parliament was at the
time "a happiness they could hardly hope for." And a few years later the
Irish House, in congratulating Queen Anne on the Union of England and
Scotland, added, "May God put it into your royal heart to add greater
strength and lustre to your Crown by a yet more comprehensive Union."

The English Parliament, through sheer lethargy and carelessness, missed
at this time an opportunity which would have peacefully launched Ireland
on her career on an equality with Scotland and England, and must have
profoundly modified the relations of the two countries. Immediate
prosperity, in the case of a land wasted by a century of strife and
bloodshed, was not indeed to be hoped for any more than in the case of
Scotland, which had still two armed rebellions, and much bickering and
jealousy in store before settling down to peaceful development. But if
Ireland had been granted her petitions for Union in 1703 and 1707, and
had thus secured equal laws and equal trading privileges, she would at
any rate have emerged from her period of trial and discord not later
than Scotland, and would have anticipated the economic and social
advantages predicted by Adam Smith,[11] when he says--

"By a union with Great Britain, Ireland would gain, besides the
freedom of trade, other advantages much more important, and which
would much more than compensate any increase of taxes that might
accompany that union. By the union with England, the middling and
inferior ranks of people in Scotland gained a complete deliverance
from the power of an aristocracy which had always before oppressed
them. By a union with Great Britain, the greater part of the people
of all ranks in Ireland would gain an equally complete deliverance
from a much more oppressiv