nsmit the
address to England, on the avowed ground of its illegality, Grattan
proposed and carried three resolutions: the first, that the address was
not illegal, but that, in addressing the Prince to take on himself the
Regency, the Parliament of Ireland had exercised an undoubted right; the
second, that the Lord-lieutenant's refusal to transmit the address to
his Royal Highness was ill-advised and unconstitutional; the third, that
a deputation from the two Houses should go to London, to present the
address to the Prince. Mr. Fronde affirms that the deputation, even when
preparing to sail for England, was very irresolute and undecided whether
to present the address or not, from a reasonable fear of incurring the
penalties of treason, to which the lawyers pronounced those who should
present it liable. But their courage was not put to the test. As has
been already seen, before the end of the month the King's recovery was
announced, and the question of a Regency did not occur again till the
Irish Parliament had been united to the English.

Since Lord Rockingham's concessions, in 1782, the project of a
legislative union between the two countries, resembling that which
united Scotland to England, had more than once been broached. We have
seen it alluded to by Fitzgibbon in the course of these discussions, and
it was no new idea. It had been discussed even before the union with
Scotland was completed, and had then been regarded in Ireland with
feelings very different from those which prevailed at a later period.
Ten years after the time of which we are speaking, Grattan denounced the
scheme with almost frantic violence. Fitzgibbon (though after the
Rebellion he recommended it as indispensable) as yet regarded it only as
an alternative which, though he might eventually embrace it, he should
not accept without extreme reluctance. But at the beginning of the
century all parties among the Protestant Irish had been eager for it,
and even the leading Roman Catholics had been not unwilling to acquiesce
in it. Unluckily, the English ministers were unable to shake off the
influence of the English manufacturers; and they, in another development
of the selfish and wicked jealousy which had led them in William's reign
to require the suppression of the Irish woollen manufacture, now, in
Anne's, rose against the proposal of a legislative union.[133] In
blindness which was not only fatal but suicidal also, "they persuaded
themselves that t