of
the present measure, what had thus been a difficulty in the Scotch Union
might have been expected to be regarded as an argument in its favor,
since the keenest patriots among the Scotch had long been convinced that
the Union had brought a vast increase of prosperity and importance to
their country, and what was now confessed to have proved advantageous to
Scotland might naturally be expected to be equally beneficial to
Ireland. Another obstacle had been the fear of the danger to which the
Presbyterian Church might be "exposed, when brought thus within the
power of a Legislature so frequently influenced by one which held her,
not as a sister, but rather a bastard usurper to a sister's
inheritance." But here again experience might give her testimony in
favor of an Irish Union, since it was incontestable that those
apprehensions--which, no doubt, many earnest Scotchmen had sincerely
entertained--had not been realized, but that since the Union the
Presbyterian Church had enjoyed as great security, as complete
independence, and as absolute an authority over its members as in the
preceding century; that the Parliament had never attempted the slightest
interference with its exercise of its privileges, and that the Church of
England had been equally free from the exhibition of any desire to
stimulate the Parliament to such action; while the Roman Catholic
Church, which had many more adherents in England than the Presbyterian
Church had ever had, was quite powerful enough to exact for itself the
maintenance of its rights, and the minister was quite willing to grant
equal securities to those which, at the beginning of the century, had
been thought sufficient for the Church of Scotland. A third reason which
our great historical critic puts forward for the disfavor with which the
Union was at the time regarded by many high-minded Scotchmen, he finds
in "the gross prostitution with which a majority sold themselves to the
surrender of their own legislative existence." That similar means were
to some extent employed to win over opponents of the government in
Ireland cannot, it must be confessed, be denied, though the temptations
held out to converts oftener took the shape of titles, promotions,
appointments, and court favors than of actual money. The most recent
historian of this period--who, to say the least, is not biassed in favor
of either the English or Irish government of the period--pronounces as
his opinion, formed after the