me.

The best means of checking hasty generalizations is to peruse letters
written at the time, before ingenious theories could be spun. Now, the
definite proposal of a Union very rarely occurs before the month of June
1798. One of the first references is in a letter of the Lord Chancellor,
Loughborough, to Pitt, dated 13th June 1798. After approving the
appointment of Cornwallis as the best means of quelling the revolt in
Ireland, he adds: "Every reasonable man in that country must feel that
their preservation depends on their connection with England, and it
ought [to] be their first wish to make it more entire. It would be very
rash to make any such suggestion from hence: but we should be prepared
to receive it and to impose the idea whenever it begins to appear in
Ireland."[531]

More important, as showing the impossibility of continuing the present
chaotic administration at Dublin, is the following letter from the Earl
of Carlisle, formerly Lord Lieutenant, to Pitt. It is undated, but
probably belongs to 2nd June 1798:[532]

... It may perhaps be but a weak apology for this interruption
to own I cannot help looking at that country [Ireland] with a
sort of affection, like an old house which one has once
inhabited, not disliking the antient arrangement of its
interior, and perhaps unreasonably prejudiced against many of
its modern innovations. The innovation that has long given me
uneasiness, and which now seems most seriously to perplex the
Irish Government, was the fatal institution of an Irish Cabinet,
which has worked itself into being, considered almost as a
component part of that deputed authority. A Government composed
of Lords Justices, natives of that country, as a permanent
establishment, absurd as such an expedient might be, would not
have at least that radical defect of authority disjoined from
responsibility. We now feel all the bad effects of a power which
should never have been confer'd, and which is strengthen'd from
hence by many acting with you, so as to make it impossible for
the Lord Lieutenant to manage with it or without it.

You have, in my poor judgment, an opportunity offer'd to crush
at one blow this defective system. Ireland, I scruple not to
say, cannot be saved if you permit an hour longer almost the
military defence of that country to depend upon the tactical
dictates of Chancellors, Speaker of th