he union would make Ireland rich, and that England's
interest was to keep her poor;" as if it had been possible for one
portion of the kingdom to increase in prosperity without every other
portion benefiting also by the improvement.

However, in the reign of Anne the union was a question only of
expediency or of wisdom. The wide divergence of the two Parliaments on
this question of the Regency transformed it into a question of
necessity. The King might have a relapse; the Irish Parliament, on a
recurrence of the crisis, might re-affirm its late resolutions; might
frame another address to the Prince of Wales; and there might be no
alternative between seeing two different persons Regents of England and
Ireland, or, what would be nearly the same thing, seeing the same person
Regent of the two countries on different grounds, and exercising a
different authority.

And if these proceedings of the Irish Parliament had wrought in the mind
of the great English minister a conviction of the absolute necessity of
preventing a recurrence of such dangers by the only practicable means
open to him--the fusion of it into one body with the English Parliament
by a legislative union--the occurrences of the ensuing ten years
enforced that conviction with a weight still more irresistible. It has
been seen how stirring an influence the revolutionary fever engendered
by the overthrow of the French monarchy for a time exerted even over the
calmer temper of Englishmen. In Ireland, where, ever since Sarsfield and
his brave garrison enlisted under the banner of Louis XIV., a connection
more or less intimate with France had been constantly kept up, the
events in Paris had produced a far deeper and wider effect. More than
one demagogue among the Volunteers had avowed a desire to see the whole
country transfer its allegiance from the English to the French
sovereign; and this preference was more pronounced after the triumph of
democracy in the French capital. For the leaders of the movement,
themselves nearly all men of the lowest degree, denounced the Irish
nobles with almost as much vehemence as the English connection.

Yet Pitt's policy, dictated partly by a spirit of conciliation, and
still more by feelings of justice, was gradually removing many of the
grievances of which the Irish had real reason to complain. Next to the
restrictions on trade, nothing had made such an impression on his mind
as the iniquity of the penal laws; and those he proce