" And a few years later the
Irish House, in congratulating Queen Anne on the Union of England and
Scotland, added, "May God put it into your royal heart to add greater
strength and lustre to your Crown by a yet more comprehensive Union."
The English Parliament, through sheer lethargy and carelessness, missed
at this time an opportunity which would have peacefully launched Ireland
on her career on an equality with Scotland and England, and must have
profoundly modified the relations of the two countries. Immediate
prosperity, in the case of a land wasted by a century of strife and
bloodshed, was not indeed to be hoped for any more than in the case of
Scotland, which had still two armed rebellions, and much bickering and
jealousy in store before settling down to peaceful development. But if
Ireland had been granted her petitions for Union in 1703 and 1707, and
had thus secured equal laws and equal trading privileges, she would at
any rate have emerged from her period of trial and discord not later
than Scotland, and would have anticipated the economic and social
advantages predicted by Adam Smith,[11] when he says--
"By a union with Great Britain, Ireland would gain, besides the
freedom of trade, other advantages much more important, and which
would much more than compensate any increase of taxes that might
accompany that union.
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