00 in all. In explanation of this payment it must
be remembered that the owning of such boroughs was a recognized form of
property, as appeared in Pitt's proposal of 1785 to compensate British
owners whom he sought to dispossess. Nothing but the near approach of
revolution in 1832 availed to shatter the system of pocket boroughs in
Great Britain; and then their owners were sent empty away. The
difference in treatment marks the infiltration of new ideas. In England
and Ireland a vote and a seat had been a form of property. According to
the Rights of Man the franchise was an inalienable right of citizenship.

The list of Union honours and preferments having been published, we need
not dwell on that unsavoury topic, except to remark that the promotions
in the peerage conferred for services in connection with the Union
numbered forty-six; that the opposition of the Protestant Archbishop of
Cashel was bought off by the promise of the Archbishopric of Dublin; and
that the number of ecclesiastical jobs consequent on the Union was
nearly twenty. The promotions in the legal profession numbered twelve.
Twelve pensions and four titular honours were also granted. Five
aspirants refused the posts offered to them because they expected "snug
sinecures" which "require no attendance at all." In March 1805 Lord
Hardwicke, successor to Cornwallis, complained that his funds were so
embarrassed by the various claims that the Irish Civil List had only
L150 in hand.[571] These sordid bargainings cannot be said to amount to
wholesale corruption, and did not much exceed those which usually were
needed to carry an important Bill through that Parliament. On the whole
Pitt and his colleagues might reflect with satisfaction that the use of
bribes served to cleanse the political life of Ireland in the future.

* * * * *

The Union of the British and Irish Parliaments is generally considered
from the insular point of view. This is quite natural; for primarily it
concerned the British Isles. Nevertheless the influences which brought
it about were more than insular. The formation of the United Kingdom, by
the Act which came into effect on 1st January 1801, was but one among
many processes of consolidation then proceeding. France was the first
State which succeeded in concentrating political power at the capital;
and the new polity endued her with a strength sufficient to break in
pieces the chaotic systems of