aroni,
who have an insuperable aversion to all changes in their government.

The first incident that befell Mr. Grenville on his departure from
England was inauspicious and discouraging. The weather was unusually
severe. On the night of Christmas Eve, the thermometer was 14 deg. below
freezing point; and for many weeks afterwards the snow lay so thickly on
the ground that the service of the ordinary coaches was arrested, and
the mails were forwarded on horseback. This delay and suspension of
communication occasioned serious anxiety at a time when every item of
intelligence was of importance to the country. The effect of the
inclement state of the season was to force Mr. Grenville back to
England. He embarked on his destination as had been arranged, but the
sea was frozen up, and, unable to effect a landing, he was compelled to
return and wait for a more favourable opportunity.

The Legislative Union between Great Britain and Ireland, which Ministers
were now preparing, was recommended to the consideration of Parliament
in a message from the King on the 22nd of January. The Rebellion had
given a decisive impulse to the project by effectually demonstrating the
want of power, energy, and influence of the local Parliament to control
the insubordinate spirit of the country, or to provide adequate remedies
for existing and acknowledged evils. It was considerably accelerated
also by the despair of the Protestants and the landed proprietors
generally, who, exhausted by the long and wasting struggles of faction,
looked to England, across the ashes of a desolating insurrection, for
the last hope of relief from anarchy and spoliation. In the letters that
immediately follow, the views of Ministers in reference to the proposed
plan are incidentally elucidated; and it appears, from Lord Grenville's
allusions to the subject, that it was originally suggested to make the
representation of the Irish Peerage in the Imperial Legislature elective
under every new Parliament, like that of the Scotch Peerage; a mode of
representation to which Lord Grenville objected, although, in other
respects, he approved of the adoption of the Scotch Union as a model for
imitation. He foresaw clearly the confusion and jealousies likely to be
engendered in such a country as Ireland by repeated elections amongst a
body whose title to the right of election rested on hereditary grounds,
and he felt that the frequent recurrence to such contests would re-open
ol