ng opponents of the Union--Plunket, Foster, Beresford--even Grattan
himself--came to accept it, and, in some cases, figured as its warmest
defenders. And the Catholic Party, whom we have seen so strongly
supporting the Union, gradually grew into opponents. Daniel O'Connell,
whose brother and uncle were the leading supporters of the Union
candidate for Kerry, started a formidable agitation first for
Emancipation and then for Repeal of the Union. In the former he
succeeded because enlightened public opinion in both countries was on
his side: in the latter he failed utterly, both parties in Great Britain
and a large section in Ireland being inflexibly opposed to any such
reactionary experiment. In the end O'Connell died disillusioned and
broken-hearted, and the Repeal movement disappeared from the field of
Irish politics till revived many years later in the form of Home Rule.

But whilst recognising the fact that the Union, owing to the causes
stated, failed partially, and for a time, to respond to all the
anticipations of its authors, readers must be warned against accepting
the wild and woeful tales of decay and ruin that were recklessly
circulated for propagandist purposes by O'Connell and the Repealers.
Many people who are content to take their facts at second hand have thus
come to believe that the legislative Union changed a smiling and
prosperous Kingdom into a blighted province where manufactures and
agriculture, commerce and population fell into rapid and hopeless
decline. Needless to say, things do not happen in that way: economic
changes, for better or for worse, are slow and gradual and depend on
natural causes, not on artificial. Ireland has not, as a whole, kept in
line with nineteenth-century progress, and her population, after a
striking increase for over forty years, showed under peculiar causes an
equally striking decrease; but to assert that her course has been one of
universal decay and of decay dating from the Union is to say what is
demonstrably untrue.

It was inevitable that a city of very limited industry like Dublin
should suffer from the disappearance of its Parliament, which brought
into residence for some months in every year some hundreds of persons of
wealth and distinction. It was also inevitable that the mechanical
inventions to which we have already alluded--the steam-engine, the
"spinning jenny," and the "mule"--which revolutionised the world's
industry, should have their effect in Irela