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It was after the exhaustion caused by the Rebellion in Ireland, that Pitt brought forward his project of the Union, and Lord Cornwallis successfully accomplished it. Mr. Massey describes at great length the means by which, in Castlereagh’s phrase, “the fee simple of Irish corruption was bought;” and the Irish Parliament, like Tarpeia, perished beneath the weight of stipulated bribery. No person acquainted in the least with history, or having any regard for Ireland, will fail to rejoice at the success of a measure which relieved her instantly from a worthless Legislature, and by incorporating her with Great Britain assured her the prospect of just government. But the delay in the grant of Catholic Emancipation, which Pitt had intended to accompany the Union, retarded for many years its benefits; and another part of the Minister’s scheme, a State provision for the Catholic priesthood, remains to this day unaccomplished. Pitt incurred a heavy responsibility on this account. It appears certain from the Castlereagh correspondence that the Irish Catholics supported the Union on something like an implied pledge that they should obtain their political rights; and on this ground, and on that, besides, of the State necessity for emancipation, Pitt can hardly escape the censure of history for not having insisted more strongly in carrying out his policy as a whole, and especially for having, in 1805, consented not to press the subject on the King when he formed his second brief Administration. It is doubtful, however, Mr. Massey observes, whether Pitt could at any period have extorted compliance from George III., or, indeed, from the people of England; and, though his conduct in this matter was not chivalrous as an individual, he may have conceived, as a public man, that he had satisfied honour by his resigning in 1801, and that afterwards he would have not been justified in depriving the country of his services for the sake of a policy impracticable at the moment.—Times review of Massey’s Hist. England.

The published Correspondence of Lord Cornwallis gives, with painful minuteness, the details of management and bribery by which the Union between Great Britain and Ireland was carried to a conclusion; but most readers of the history of the period are satisfied with knowing that the Union was a political necessity, that the parties to be dealt with in effecting it—the Irish Parliament and its patrons—were utterly corrupt, and that persuasion was the only method which it was possible to employ. The result was inevitable. The Government bid high, and as it bid the vendors raised their prices, and still the Government bid higher. At last the owners of seats were gorged with the sum of 15,000l. for each disfranchised borough, and the whole amount of compensation thus extorted reached the magnificent figure of 1,260,000l. We can hardly be thankful enough that Lord Grey’s Government had the firmness to resist the application of so inconvenient a precedent in the Reform Bill of 1832.