Castle and to allow the Crown to have a veto in the appointment of their prelates in consideration of a fixed stipend to be paid by the Crown to their clergy. The most violent of the Anti-unionists were the very people who had supported the Government through the recent troubles the Protestant nobility and gentry and the Orange lodges, amongst whom prevailed "universal horror and disgust at the idea of an union." It was necessary to conciliate these by the most solemn assurances that the Established Church of Ireland should be maintained inviolable by statute, and its continuance should be a fundamental article of the Union. Desertion by placemen was punished by immediate dismissal. Colonel Foster, commissioner of the revenue, was the first victim. Mr. George Knox and Mr. Wolfe, also commissioners, followed. Mr. Neville lost the commissionership of accounts; Mr. A. Hamilton, the cursitorship in chancery; Mr. John Claudius Beresford, the sinecure office of inspector-general of exports and imports; and Major C. Hamilton was dismissed from the barrack board. Colonel Cole, whose regiment was at Malta, was ordered to rejoin, and when he desired to vacate his seat, which would inevitably have been refilled by an Anti-unionist, the Government refused him the escheatorship of Munster.

Parliament was prorogued in June. The Government, after the adverse reception of the union scheme at the beginning of the session, set themselves steadily to work to secure a sufficient majority in the session following. The members were corrupt enough as it was; but they

were slaves to the borough owners, who had sent them to Parliament. The first thing to do was to purchase the borough owners, chiefly members of the Upper House; and then, either by the help of the latter to compel recalcitrant and honest members to resign their seats in favour of people who would vote for the union; or by means of the bait of pensions, places, and promotions to buy the support of the venal.

In the United House of Commons there were, according to the proposed bill, to be one hundred members from Ireland; and, as the Irish Commons consisted of three hundred members, it necessarily followed that two-thirds of the seats would disappear. Each of the thirty-two counties was to return two members, making sixty-four; and the remaining thirty-six were to be disposed of as follows-Two each to the cities of Dublin and Cork, one to the University, and one each to the cities of Waterford, Limerick, and Cashel, and the twenty-eight boroughs which escaped extinction. All the remaining boroughs, eighty-five in number, and each returning two members, were consigned to perdition. These eighty-five boroughs were one and all of them in the hands of private owners. No less than fifty-six of them were possessed by members of the Upper House. Castlereagh saw the way to the pockets and consciences of members of both branches of the Irish legislature through these eighty-five boroughs. He proposed to compensate every one of the proprietors at the rate of £15,000 apiece. And where, as in many cases it was so, one person possessed three or four seats, the figure

at which the compensation would stand was a very large one. Lord Ely eventually received no less than £45,000 for his six seats, and Lord Downshire £52,500 for his seven. The sum required amounted in the whole to £1,260,000! and this enormous bribe to the men who sold their country was in the event actually paid, and added to the debt of Ireland.

This master stroke in corruption was supplemented by wholesale and reckless bribery of a different description. Irish peerages, English peerages, steps in the peerage, baronetcies, bishoprics, livings, judgeships, regiments; places and preferments legal, civil, and military ; social advancements, Castle patronage, flattering conde.scension, even direct bribes in hard cash, were lavished with an unsparing hand according to the character and weakness of the individual to be secured. Twenty-two Irish peerages were conferred, six English peerages, and twenty-two promotions were made in the Irish peerage, -forty-eight patents of nobility as a reward for dirty work.

All through the year 1799, Castlereagh and the viceroy, assisted by the Castle under-secretaries— Edward Cooke and Colonel Littlehales, were employed on their unholy mission; Cornwallis in the summer making a tour through the island, and staying at the country houses of the nobility to complete his canvass. How vile was the traffic appears from the contemptuous loathing with which he regarded the recipients of Castle favours. "It is a sad thing," he

writes to Ross, "to be forced to manage knaves, but it is

ten times worse to deal with fools. I am kept here to manage matters of a most disgusting nature to my feelings." And on June 8, 1799, “My occupation is now of the most unpleasant nature, negotiating and jobbing with the most corrupt people under heaven. I despise and hate myself every hour for engaging in such dirty work." And again, "The political jobbing of this country gets the better of me. It has ever been the wish of my life to avoid all this dirty business; and I am now involved in it beyond all bearing, and am consequently more wretched than ever. I trust I shall live to get out of this most accursed of all situations, and most repugnant to my feelings. How I long to kick those whom my public duty obliges me to court!" It is sad to think to what vile uses so gallant a soldier was put. Lord Castlereagh does not appear to have been so fastidious. He despised the venal crew with whom he had to deal, but he does not appear to have felt the debasing nature of the higgling.*

For a list of peerages given in consideration of support upon the question of the union, see Appendix 5.

CHAPTER XXIV.

ANNEXATION. A.D. 1800.

ON January 15, 1800, the Irish Parliament met for the last time. The Opposition had striven with desperation to strengthen their party, and had obtained Antiunion petitions from twenty-six out of the thirty-two counties. They even went so far as to suggest opposition by force, and to propose the calling of the yeomanry to arms. Such was the consistency of the Protestant Ascendency, who had just trampled out in blood the armed resistance of the United Irishmen to a detested Government. Lord Downshire obtained a petition against the union from the officers and men of his regiment-the Downshire militia. He was deprived of his command and dismissed from the Privy Council, and the lord-lieutenancy of his county. Ireland was too well garrisoned with troops to admit of active resistance.

The work of the Government had been done effectually. One result of their negotiations had been that some sixteen members had accepted the escheatorship of Munster, in favour of supporters of the Government; and Lord Castlereagh was reckoning on having a majority of sixty in the service of the Crown.