on
the topic at issue, they differed quite as much as to the question on
which side there had been a failure of friendship, confidence, or
attention. The rupture became complete on 20th March, when Auckland
declared in the Lords that Pitt's resignation was involved in mystery
which the eye could not penetrate. The insinuation wounded Pitt deeply;
and his intercourse with Auckland entirely ceased. Pitt was not exacting
in his social intercourse; but no man of high feeling can endure secret
opposition, followed by a veiled insinuation that what he has done from
high principle resulted from motives that cannot bear the light. This is
an unpardonable sin that ends friendship.

* * * * *

With all his outward composure, Pitt must have felt deep distress at his
failure to complete the Union by the act of grace which he had in
contemplation. The time was ripe, indeed overripe, for a generous
experiment, whereby seven tenths of the Irish people would have gained
religious equality. If the populace of Dublin hailed with joy the St.
Patrick's cross on the new Union Jack,[605] we may be sure that
Irishmen, irrespective of creed, would have joined heart and soul in the
larger national unity which it typified. It is probable that Pitt, when
granting the franchise to Irish Catholics in 1793, resolved to make the
other concessions at an early date. But the cause of Catholic
Emancipation having been prejudiced by the unwise haste of Fitzwilliam
in 1795, and by raids and revolts soon after, the time of the Union was
the first which he could seize with any chance of success; and he hoped
to vitalize that Union by an act which would then have been hailed as a
boon. Such acts of grace are all too rare in the frigid annals of
British Parliaments. The Anglo-Saxon race builds its political fabric
too exclusively on material interests; and the whole structure is the
uglier and weaker for this calculating hardness. At the time of the
Union with Scotland, the counsellors of Queen Anne utterly failed to
touch the hearts of the Scots; and it was left to commerce sluggishly
and partially to mingle the two peoples. In contrast with this dullness,
how inspiring are the annals of France in the early and best days of the
Revolution. Then the separatist Provincial System vanished as a miasma;
and amidst the eager hopes and class renunciations of that golden day
the French people found a unity such as legislato