But
the century that had been wasted involved many concurrent miseries and
misfortunes: social and economic stagnation, an intensification of
religious and racial bitterness, conspiracy, and invasion; savage
outbreaks savagely repressed. When the time comes to measure up the
rights and wrongs of those dark days, the judgment on England will
assuredly be that her fault was not the carrying of the Union, but the
delaying of that great measure of reform and emancipation until it was
almost too late.
The story of the Union has been told and retold in the utmost detail
throughout the century. The present writer has attempted quite recently
to summarise it,[12] and there is little to add. The charge that it was
carried by corruption is simply another way of saying that it had,
constitutionally, to be passed through the Dublin Parliament, that body
which, from the days of Swift's invective to those of its final
condemnation, lived and moved and had its being solely in and by
corruption. As Lord Castlereagh, who had charge of the Bill in the Irish
House of Commons, put it, the Government was forced to recognise the
situation and its task was "to buy out and secure to the Crown forever
the fee simple of Irish corruption, which has so long enfeebled the
power of Government and endangered the connection.
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