The Taoiseach has raised the awful spectre of the tribunals sitting for the next two centuries; but he warned against it. Always a man who spreads himself around, Bertie Ahern launched two very different books in Dublin on Monday night: Acts of Union - The Causes, Contexts and Consequences of the Act of Union, edited by Daire Keogh and Kevin Whelan in the Merrion Hotel; Hanged for Ireland - the Forgotten Ten executed 1920-21 by Tim Carey at Hotel St George in Parnell Square.
He told those gathered in the Merrion - "a humble stable where the Duke of Wellington was born" - that the recently found secret-service papers exposing the bribery and corruption which ensured the Act of Union was passed should not "encourage the tribunals to keep sitting for the next two centuries in the hope of finding incriminating proof". Revisionists had got it spectacularly wrong by suggesting the act was passed without resort to bribery and corruption, a suggestion that nowadays would no doubt be dismissed, at first, as "smear and innuendo".
One of the essays referred to a singing MP (one William Handcock) who wrote ballads against the Union in 1799 and ballads for the Union in 1800. He had one or two gifted ministers like that, the Taoiseach said. But since he wouldn't name them Quidnunc wonders was it singers or pragmatists he had in mind. Probably both.
The centrepiece is a collection of cartoons from the period and an essay explaining them by their owner, Nick Robinson.