Page 303 - Demo

Chapter eight 303
In January 1799, the Viceroy, the victorious Lord Cornwallis, concluded his address to the Irish Parliament with the following sentence:
“The unremitting industry with which our enemies persevere in their avowed design of endeavouring to efect a separation of this kingdom from Great Britain must have engaged your attention, and His Majesty commands me to express his anxious hope that this consideration, joined to the sentiment of mutual afection and common interest, may dispose the Parliaments in both kingdoms to provide the most efec- tive means of maintaining and improving a connection essential to their common security, and of consolidating, as far as possible, into one irm and lasting fabric the strength, the power, and the resources of the British Empire.”
An amendment “that the undoubted birthright of the people of Ireland, a resident and independent legislature, should be maintained” was lost by a single vote and was looked upon disdainly as a defeat of the Government.
Furthermore, on the split which came after the debate on the Report of the Address, the Government was defeated by a majority of ive. The Irish Houses of Lords declared in favour of the Union, as did both Houses of the British Parliament. Now, notwithstanding the attitude of the Irish House of Commons, the Prime Minister Pitt was determined that come hell or high water the union would be accomplished. Accordingly, during a temporary cessation of business, the Viceroy, Lord Cornwallis and the Irish Chief Secretary, the ruth- less expert manipulator, Robert Stewart, or to give him his title, Lord Castlereagh, after- wards Marquis of Londonderry, well supported by his equal, John Fitzgibbon, the Ist Earl of Clare, set about obtaining a secure majority in the Irish House of Commons in favour of the Union.
Castlereagh’s motto was to use his own words, “to buy up the fee-simple of Irish corrup- tion.” In order to purchase votes wherever they were to be found, these unscrupulous and ambitious men liberally bestowed peerages, pensions, estates, together with large inancial bribes to those men of no loyalty whom they felt needed to be compensated and sustained for a so called change of heart. This cost was colossal, with over £1,250,000 spent on buying out the rights of rotten boroughs and occupants of parliamentary posts. Moreover, in order to enlist popular opinion in favour of the Union, Cornwallis falsely intimated that “Catholic Emancipation” would be granted once the Act of Union was passed and in law.
As a result of this liberal and expensive chicanery, when the Irish Parliament opened for