Pitt Rams Union Resolution Through Irish Parliament

Pitt wished to combine the Union with the emancipation of the Irish Catholics.

Continuing Ireland Joined to United Kingdom,
our selection from Ireland 1494-1898 by William O’Connor Morris published in 1898. The selection is presented in six easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Ireland Joined to United Kingdom.

Time: 1800

He [Pitt] saw also that probably the best means to secure the Established Church in Ireland, to keep the land in Protestant hands, in a word to maintain what he called “the Protestant Settlement,” was to make Ireland one with Great Britain; nor was he blind to the possible evils of the existing state of Catholic Ireland. But, though he was not insensible to them, he did not completely grasp the truths that, after the horrors of 1798, the only hope for Ireland, torn as she had been by a barbarous strife of race and faith, was to bring her under the control of an imperial parliament; and that the only wise policy for a British minister was, with the aid of a strong and just government, to place Catholic and Protestant, Saxon and Celt, on an equal level of civil and religious rights. This justification of the Union he did not fully realize, at least he did not act boldly as if he did; and we may smile at his notions that the introduction of Irish members into the United Parliament might largely increase the power of the Crown, and that a union would cause Irish faction quickly to cease. Pitt, in fact, as we have before remarked, was ignorant of the true state of Ireland, and in the case of Ireland as in that of France in 1792-1793, he had not the genius to perceive what was beyond his immediate ken.

It was the wish of Pitt to combine the Union with the emancipation of the Irish Catholics, and with measures to provide funds for the support of the Catholic Irish priesthood, and for the commutation of the tithes of the Established Church; he had seen, we have said, the bad effects of this impost. This policy was in the right direction; but it was not original, as has been alleged; the Irish Parliament would have conceded the Catholic claims in 1795; the payment of the priests was an old idea, and had been advocated by Irish writers and statesmen; the com mutation of the tithe was a favorite plan of Grattan. Pitt, however, did not persist in the project, which he had hoped to make an essential part of the Union; he yielded to the counsels of Clare, greatly trusted by him in Irish affairs, and consented to deprive his measure of these features; he knew, too, at this time, that George III was obstinately opposed to the demands of the Catholics. This was the first of his grave mistakes on the subject; it is the more to be blamed because Cornwallis, able to gauge Irish opinion on the spot, always insisted that the Union could not succeed, if Catholic emancipation was not made, so to speak, its gift.

Means were taken, toward the close of 1798, to ascertain the judgment of Irishmen on the question of Union and Catholic emancipation. A few of the great peers agreed to support the scheme, should it serve their interests; a number of members of the Irish Houses were ready to obey the minister on the usual terms; some of the independent landed gentry, alarmed at the events of 1798, beheld in the Union safety for themselves; the leading men of Catholic Ireland, much as they had resented Fitzwilliam’s recall, were not unwilling so consider the subject. But an immense majority of the Irish Protestants, the trading classes of Dublin almost to a man, and nine-tenths, at least, of the Irish bar, were indignant at the very thought of a union, and expressed their sentiments in emphatic language: this is the more remarkable because the country was held down by a British armed force, and the views of the British Ministry were perfectly well known. In these circumstances, Robert Stewart, Lord Castlereagh, the chief secretary of Cornwallis, announced, somewhat vaguely, the policy of Pitt, in the Irish House of Com mons in a speech on the address made in January, 1799; but an amendment was rejected by one vote only; and, as this was plainly equivalent to a defeat, the measure was permitted to drop for a time.

Though the Government had been baffled in the Irish Lower House, it obtained a large majority in the Irish House of Lords, where the influence of Clare was easily supreme. The British Parliament had, about the same time, passed resolutions in favor of the Union by an overwhelming majority of votes; and Pitt insisted that the measure could be carried out in Ireland. But it was far from easy to give his purpose effect; and means were adopted, the exact nature of which has been matter of controversy ever since, but of which the general character is not doubtful. The Irish Parliament had long been swayed by corrupt influence; this had probably increased since 1782; it had been openly exercised on the “Regency Question.” Direct bribery was not employed; but promises of peerages were lavishly scattered; places were created and places unscrupulously filled, in order to obtain support for the scheme; officials were threatened with dismissal if they did not vote for the Government; appeals were persistently made to the hopes and the fears of the members in both parts of the Irish Parliament. Simultaneously, pledges were given that immense sums were to be paid to the patrons and the proprietors of the numerous boroughs to be disfranchised; and one of the reforms effected in 1793, by which placemen in the House of Commons were compelled to vacate their seats, was twisted into a method to secure a majority. By these expedients, regarded by Cornwallis with disgust, but employed by his chief secretary with unflinching boldness, the Irish Parliament was packed to vote for a union; but it is only just to add that, from the first, many of its members —- and the number certainly tended to increase-conscientiously approved of Pitt’s policy.

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