was to be considered as part of the Union (that is, as not liable to be afterwards changed).

6. There should be no duty charged nor bounty given on the export of the products of Ireland to England, or vice versa. 7. All products of either country, except those on a list given, should be imported free to the other.

8. There should be the same charges on foreign imports in both countries.

9. For the present, Ireland should contribute to the common expenditure of both countries in the proportion of two parts in seventeen (that is to say, of every seventeen pounds spent, she should contribute two). This arrangement might afterwards be re-adjusted.

10. The part of the revenue of Ireland which would remain over, after the two-in-seventeen charges had been paid, was to be used to pay the interest of the National Debt of Ireland, to reduce the debt itself, and for local needs.

11. No article was to be more highly taxed in Ireland than in England. 12. If the separate National Debt of each country should be liquidated,

or if the value of the respective debts should become to each other of the same proportion as the separate contributions fixed for each country respectively-that is to say, two parts in seventeen, or as two to fifteen (at present the Irish Debt was to the English as one to sixteen and a half), it should be competent for Parliament to declare that all future expenses should be indiscriminate, or in other words, to order the amalgamation of the exchequers. When, or if, this happened, equal taxes should be imposed on both countries, "subject only to such abatements for Ireland as circumstances may seem to require."

As the representation of the Irish Commons in the Imperial Parliament was to be limited to 100, of whom sixty-four were to sit for the thirty-two counties, the majority of the 236 boroughs of the Dublin Parliament would be disfranchised. Of these, eighty-four were "nomination boroughs" (see Chapter V), and it was agreed that their patrons should be compensated. A regular Bill was passed for the purpose (after the passing of the Union Act), £15,000 being adjudged to be the value of each seat. Although the possession of this patronage at all was certainly an abuse, so that neither in law nor in strict justice could any claim be considered as existing for compensation for its loss, yet the practice of several generations had acknowledged it, and its workings had become a part of the regular Parliamentary system. At

any rate the open payment for the seats cannot fairly be regarded as bribery, especially as the money was to be given irrespective of whether the dispossessed patron voted for or against the Union.

Passage of the Act through Parliament.-After this digression we may return to follow to the end the fortunes of the Act of Union in its passage through Parliament. The debate which followed Castlereagh's speech ended, as it was bound to end, in a Government victory. At the Division the ayes were 158, the noes 115, giving a majority of 43. In the Lords the Opposition was much less strong. Lord Clare made, in favour of the Government Scheme, a long speech in which he contrived to insult with impartiality the Catholics and the Protestant opposers of the Union, styling the latter "a puny and rapacious oligarchy" and the former "deluded barbarians." It is scarcely likely that it influenced a single vote of the seventy-five given on the Government side, as against twentyfive only secured by their opponents. In the Commons there was another debate towards the end of February. Grattan, on this as on previous occasions, exerted all the powers of his eloquence in defence of a hopeless cause. A proposal by the Opposition for a General Election was defeated; there could now be little doubt as to the final result.

In March the measure was put before the English Parliament, and the Irish Houses adjourned to await their decision. The only serious opposition to the Union made at Westminster came from Lord Grey, but thirty members alone supported his motion.

When the resolutions of the English Houses were returned to Ireland the "Act for the Legislative Union of England and Ireland” (40 George III, Chap. 38.) was drawn up in its final form, and began its progress through the Parliament of which it was the death-blow. The first reading (May 21st) showed a Government majority of sixty. At the second (May 26th) this had fallen to forty, which even fell on a second division to thirty-seven, but the victory of Pitt was none the less sure. On this occasion there was not so full a House; the interest in an issue regarded as certain had flagged. The members who attended, however, were rewarded by hearing probably the most eloquent and certainly the most famous of Grattan's anti-Union speeches.

The Opposition attempted to carry an Address to the King, but only added one more to their previous defeats.

Extinction of the Irish Parliament.-The day had now come (June 7th) when the final step was to be taken; when the Bill for the Legislative Union was to be read a third time, and the Parliament of Ireland was to vote its own extinction. Before the report stage was reached, the majority of the anti-Unionist members, unwilling to actually witness the ruin of their cause, withdrew in a body. Thus, though the

galleries were crowded, there were many empty benches on the floor of the House itself, when Lord Castlereagh moved the third reading of the Bill. Amidst a dead silence, John Foster, the Speaker, rose and asked the will of the House in the usual form: "As many as are of opinion that this Bill should pass say aye." The answer was given without enthusiasm, but there could be no doubt as to its nature. "The ayes have it," Foster announced. Such was the end of the Irish Parliament.

The proceedings in the Lords were little more than formal. There the third reading took place on June 12th. When all was over, however, nineteen peers, headed by the Duke of Leinster, head of the great AngloIrish family of the Geraldines, entered in the Journals of their House their solemn protest against the Union, "the yoke which it imposes, the dishonour which it inflicts . . . the means employed to effect it, the discontents it has excited, and must continue to excite."

The passing of the Act of Union appears to have been received by the country at large with a tranquillity which was scarcely to be expected, and for which the Ministers had scarcely dared to hope. It is perhaps to be accounted for partly by the exhaustion of a struggle long seen to be hopeless; by weariness of a subject which now for almost two years had been constantly before the people; most of all probably by the fact that, though, during the last decades of the eighteenth century, the Dublin Parliament had become for the educated classes, both Protestants and Catholics, an ever-increasing object of national interest and national pride, yet the exclusion from a direct share in its activities of the members of the Church to which the majority of the people belonged, had prevented it from being regarded as the Parliament of the Irish nation. In August the Act of Union received the Royal Assent and became law. On the 1st of January, 1801, it came into operation. Guns were fired to commemorate the event, and a new standard, on which for the first time the saltire cross of St. Patrick, red on a white ground, was joined with the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew, floated from the Castles of Dublin, London, and Edinburgh.

CHAPTER XXIV

GAELIC LITERATURE OF THE EIGHTEENTH

CENTURY

Education Proscribed: The "Hedge-Schools."-The

desolating

peace of the Penal times was a more sinister peril to Irish literature than had been any of the devastating wars of invasion or spoliation that had plagued the country. Legislation which struck directly at mind and character was more deadly than the sword. With education denied to an entire people, and teaching made a criminal offence, there seemed to be little hope of literary activity. The great mass of the people belonged to the proscribed faith, and they were also Gaelic speakers, so that their language was penalised equally with their religion. Some of the well-to-do Catholics were able to send their sons to Douai and St. Omer and other centres on the Continent in defiance of the laws. But most of the people had to depend upon the learning they could obtain in the "hedge-schools." These seats of study, conducted-also in defiance of the law-by teachers with a price upon their heads, were the surviving representatives of the great scholastic establishments of earlier times. There were maintained to some extent the traditions of classical learning, and there also—and there alone-were cultivated the language and literature, the history and legends of the Gaelic race. In these illegal academies the peasantry got all that was left of native culture, while their more prosperous and leisured neighbours came back from their foreign schools with a foreign education.

Outburst of Song. Yet the literary instinct which had flourished during wars of conquest and extermination also asserted itself amidst the blighting horrors of persecution. Of literature of a serious description there was indeed but little. Strangely enough, the creative genius of the down-trodden and almost hopeless people burst forth in song. "The Irish, deprived by the Penal laws of all possibility of bettering their condition, or of educating themselves, could do nothing but sing, which they did in every county of Ireland, with all the sweetness of the dying swan." * A great deal of the works of these numerous poets has been lost. Deprived of the advantages of the printing press, their poems were * Dr. Douglas Hyde, "Literary History of Ireland."

preserved only in the tenacious memories of the peasantry, or in manuscripts copied in humble cottages by loving hands. But many have been retained, and in recent years some of them have been published.

The Poets and their Themes.-Many of the eighteenth century poets were schoolmasters teaching in the hedge-schools; most of them wandered from place to place; and the lives of some were not very edifying. Their themes are often political, deploring the downfall of the Gael, and hoping for the return of the Stuarts and the exiled chiefs. Ireland is frequently personified under poetic names-" Roisin Dubh," "Caitlin Ni Uallacháin," etc.-and frequently the beauteous maiden who appears to the poet in an "aisling," or vision, reveals herself as “the maid Eire.” The Saxon churls and "bodachs " who have taken the places of the courteous and liberal Irish gentry are bitterly satirised. Ardent love-songs and praises of the tavern are varied with humorous verses and with pieces descriptive of local scenes and local events. All these subjects are dealt with in the new verse forms which were brought by the poets of this period to the highest perfection of melody.

Significance of the Poetry. The poetry which was produced in the Penal days, and which has only recently been saved from complete disappearance, possesses an interest distinct from the purely literary one. It portrays the social life and mental outlook of the people in a manner very different from that of the writers of English or the orators of the Irish Parliament, and indicates the existence of a national consciousness separate and distinct, and common to south, north and west. The frequent allusions to the characters of Greek mythology and Latin literature show that the traditions of the old scholarship were still, to some extent, retained in the so-called "hedge-schools." That the classical Gaelic literature was also cultivated is shown by the numerous references to the ancient mythology, legends, and history-references which continuously assume that they will be immediately understood by their hearers. These literary and historical allusions are so woven into the poems-the characters and events of legend and history, the native names of territories and districts, the famous ancestors of the great families are all dealt with so intimately-that these, the last of the natural" writers of Irish, cannot be intelligently appreciated without a knowledge of the earlier literature and history of the country.

The Munster Poets.-Every part of the country produced one or more of these peasant poets, but the south was either more prolific than the rest of the country or more tenacious in preserving the poetry. In every county of Munster flourished poets of greater or lesser merit, the most prominent amongst them being the following:- Clare,

*The dates of their births and deaths-where known-and the names of their best known poems are put in brackets.