and surrendered without fighting, at Ballinamuck (8th Sept.); Killala was recovered a month after its capture. (22nd Sept.)

In October, a fresh armament of eight frigates, four or five thousand soldiers, and one ship of the line, the Hoche, appeared on the coast of Donegal. Sir John Borlase Warren brought them to action, and took six frigates with the man-of-war. Three other frigates, a fortnight afterwards (Oct. 27), showed themselves at Killala, but fled on sighting some British ships. Among the captures was Theobald Wolfe Tone, who had fled in 1795. He produced a French commission, and appeared before the court martial in French uniform; but these assumptions did not save him; he was condemned, and when his request to be shot as a soldier was refused, he cut his throat rather than be hanged as a traitor. (Died 29th Nov.) On board one of the vessels which got away was Napper Tandy; he was afterwards arrested at Hamburgh, by British agents, tried (1801), pleaded guilty, and died in France.

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CHAPTER XIII.

THE UNION.

As soon as all became tranquil, the government very properly availed itself of the strength which alarm and victory impart, to carry the Legislative Union of Ireland and Great Britain. What had occurred in 1788, on the appointment of a regent, sufficiently illustrated the dangers of separation; and though the means employed by William Pitt were not pure, yet the measure benefited his country, and forms a pleasing feature in the review of an administration which, if we except naval triumphs, has little else to boast of than the maintenance of domestic order by severity. The subject came before the two parliaments on the same day (22nd Jan., 1799), and in Ireland a majority of one only appeared for ministers (106 to 105). After this, parliament, by adjournment and prorogation, did not sit till January, 1800. The first division exhibited a sufficient majority to carry the question (158 to 115).

This change had been produced by corruption. Twenty-seven titles were added to the peerage; promotions, grants, and promises were lavished in profusion. Eighty-four boroughs were bought at the rate of £15,000 a-piece, and the sum of £1,260,000 was granted by act of parliament, as compensation to the patrons. Thus parliamentary opposition lost its fervour. In the country at large the project had originally been received with dislike and suspicion, but William Pitt allowed intimation of his intention to relieve the Roman Catholics to circulate privately: an informal paper, without names, to this effect, was handed to Dr. Troy by Lord Cornwallis. And the prime minister honestly meant to fulfil the expectations he had raised, but found the

king intractable. Correspondence since published has proved that Pitt's resignation in March, 1801, had no other immediate and visible cause than the difference of opinion between him and George III. about concessions to the Irish Roman Catholics. Therefore, when it became reported among the most influential of the Roman Catholic body that their condition would be improved, opposition to the Union ceased as far as they were concerned; and the excitement with which the scheme had first been received died away into acquiescence.

One objection only obtained recognition-namely, that, as tithe of agistment had been stopped only by a vote of the House of Commons, the Union would give validity to that which the people considered a grievance. Lord Castlereagh, who conducted the public business, immediately sacrificed the agistment tithe, and brought in a bill for its extinction. The Act of Union received the royal assent in Ireland on the 1st of August, 1800.

The articles most interesting were the 4th, which provides, that four bishops, by rotation, and twentyeight lords, elected for life, shall sit in the Peers; and one hundred members in the Commons: the 5th, which makes the continuance and preservation of the Established Church of England and Ireland an essential and fundamental part of the Union: the 7th, which arranges that the interest of the national debt shall be separately defrayed by each kingdom for itself; and that, for twenty years, Ireland should contribute two seventeenths towards the general expenditure of the United Empire.

It has been already stated, that William Pitt had privately secured the concurrence of the Roman Catholics in his measure of the Union, by offering terms. In January, 1799, he proposed to the Roman Catholic prelates, an independent provision for their clergy; and a large number of Romish bishops agreed that the crown should have a veto on appointments,

grounding this concession on the right the crown ought to possess of being satisfied as to the loyalty of those receiving its money. Hence afterwards arose the veto question. When Pitt found that King George III. would grant no relief to the Roman Catholics, he resigned his post to Mr. Addington: his inability to carry the relief was the publicly alleged cause of that resignation, and it was plainly declared by Lord Grenville in the House of Lords to have produced the change of ministry. What has occasionally been conjectured about some difficulty in making peace with Bonaparte does not appear to have authority.

CHAPTER XIV.

EMANCIPATION.

SINCE the Legislative Union between Great Britain and Ireland, the chief attention of the annalist is devoted to the progress of the Roman Catholic relief bills, the indispensable preliminaries to a real union. These bills lived and died for a quarter of a century within the walls of St. Stephen's Chapel at Westminster, and their abortive cries belong more to parliamentary debate than to the record of facts. They must, therefore, be rapidly reviewed, as we hasten to the conclusion, which, springing from Ireland's own soil, terminated the fatigue of orators on the subject. A few isolated occurrences are scattered over the lapse of years, to vary the monotony of this discussion,

:

In 1803 broke out Emmett's Rebellion, as a miserable plot of one man and his hundred followers is commonly called. Robert Emmett was a younger brother of Emmett, involved in the treasons of '98. He devoted his whole fortune of £2500 to the furtherance of his scheme took a lease of a malt-house in Mass-lane, Dublin (24th March), as a depôt for ammunition and arms, and, about the same time, established other similar magazines. His confidants were William Dowdall, formerly secretary to the Irish Whig Club, who had been in confinement at Fort George in Scotland; one Stafford, a baker; and one Quigley, a bricklayer. His plan had nearly been defeated by the explosion of some powder (16th July), at one of his depôts in Patrickstreet; but the supineness of the police overlooked the accident. Some disaffected persons in Kildare having been solicited, sent commissioners to inspect his preparations, and from them received an unsatisfactory report.