olfe Tone, who maintained that since
constitutional reforms had failed, force must be their resort. He sent
agents to Paris, and the new French republic consented to assist in an
attempt to establish a republic in Ireland.

{237}

When the year 1798 closed, there had been another unsuccessful
rebellion. Ferocity had been met by ferocity, and Wolfe Tone and
Edward Fitzgerald (a Geraldine) had perished in the ruin of the
structure they had wildly built. Flood and Grattan had stood aloof
from this miserable undertaking. It was now eighteen years since the
constitutional triumph which had proved so barren. England was in
stern mood. Pitt had long believed that the effacement of the Irish
Parliament and a legislative union of the two countries was the only
solution. The Irish Protestants were shown the benefits of the
protection this would afford them, while the bait offered to the
Catholics was emancipation, the removal of disabilities which it was
intimated would quickly follow. But no one was won to the cause,
Grattan, in the most impassioned way protesting against it, and the
measure was defeated. Then followed the darkest page in the chapter.

It is well known that large amounts of money were paid to the owners of
eighty-five doubtful boroughs--boroughs which would be effaced by the
union--that peerages and {238} baronetcies were generously distributed,
and that shortly after, the measure was again brought up and carried!
So by the Act of Union, 1800, the Irish Parliament had ceased to exist,
and the two countries were politically merged. It is certain that the
union was hateful to the Irish people, and that it was tainted by the
suspicion of dishonorable methods, which one hundred years have failed
to disprove. It may have been the best thing possible, under the
circumstances, for Ireland; but to the Irish patriots it seemed a
crowning act of oppression accomplished by treachery.

You cannot combine oil and water by pouring them into one glass. The
union was not a union. The natures of the two races were utterly
hostile. Centuries of cruel wrong and outrage had accentuated every
undesirable trait in the Irish people. A nature simple, confiding,
spontaneous, and impulsive, had become suspicious, explosive, and
dangerous. Pugnacity had grown into ferocity. A joyous,
light-hearted, and engaging people had become a sullen and vindictive
one; famine, misery, and ignorance had put their stamp of degradat