the passing of the Union
legislation. In both instances the Roman Catholic vote predominated, and
in both the feeling was so strong in favour of the Union that no
opponent dared to face the poll. In after years Mr. Maurice Fitzgerald,
the Knight of Kerry, recounted his experiences. "Having accepted
office," he says, "as a supporter of the Union, I went to two elections
pending the measure and was returned without opposition in a county
where the Roman Catholic interest greatly preponderated, and a
declaration almost unanimous in favour of the Union proceeded from the
County of Kerry. One of my most strenuous supporters in bringing forward
that declaration was Mr. Maurice O'Connell, uncle of Mr. Daniel
O'Connell, and my most active partisan was Mr. John O'Connell, brother
of Mr. Daniel O'Connell."

In Newry an attempt was made to put up an anti-Unionist candidate, but
the Roman Catholic Bishop, Dr. Lennan, met and repulsed the intruder in
militant fashion. "Mr. Bell," he reports to Archbishop Troy, "declined
the poll, and surrendered yesterday. The Catholics stuck together like
the Macedonian phalanx, and with ease were able to turn the scale in
favour of the Chancellor of the Exchequer."

To the Irish Catholic at the time of the Union, the Dublin legislature
was, indeed, in the words of Mr. Denys Scully, a leading Catholic
layman, "not our Parliament, for we had no share in it, but their
Club-house."

The summing up of the whole matter is perhaps best expressed in the
measured judgment of Mr. John Morley in his study of the life of Edmund
Burke. Burke, in an evil moment for himself and for Ireland, had lent
himself in 1785 to what Mr. Morley called the "factious" and
"detestable" course of Fox and the English Whig leaders in destroying
Pitt's Commercial Propositions.

"Had it not been for what he himself called the delirium of the
preceding session" (writes Burke's biographer)[13] "he would have
seen that Pitt was in truth taking his first measures for the
emancipation of Ireland from an unjust and oppressive subordination
and for her installation as a corporate member of the Empire--the
only position permanently possible for her.... A substantial boon
was sacrificed amid bonfires and candles to the phantom of Irish
Legislative Independence. The result must have convinced Pitt more
firmly than ever that his great master, Adam Smith, was right in
predicting that noth