AS WE face into 2011, it may be slightly consoling to know that two centuries ago Ireland’s financial situation was even more dire.
When the Irish parliament gained independence in 1782, the Irish exchequer owed a mere £2,000,000. When it was abolished in 1800, the figure had ballooned to £70,000,000 and by 1817 it had escalated to £113,000,000.
Oddly enough, the records don’t show much concern, probably because most of the borrowing was used to finance Britain’s war with France. It was a side issue in the grand scheme to forge the legislative union of the two kingdoms which the British prime minister, William Pitt, considered necessary and which he tasked the lord lieutenant in Dublin, Lord Charles Cornwallis, to achieve.
By the beginning of 1800, Cornwallis was happy that he could succeed.
True, the military had still failed to extirpate banditti such as Michael Dwyer who infested some of the wilder parts of the country following the rebellions two years previously, loyalists were still burning chapels in the south east and peasants were maiming cattle in Connaught, but the country in general was calm and he was confident that the army, now numbering more than 40,000, would be able to handle local disorders.
Following a crisis at the end of 1788 when it seemed that the British and Irish parliaments might take different approaches to the appointment of the Prince of Wales as regent during the temporary insanity of the King George III, Pitt had become determined to achieve union, and worries over trade and Ireland’s vulnerability to a French invasion hardened his resolve. Furthermore, it seemed inevitable that Catholics would become a majority in the Dublin parliament if it was allowed to survive, but they would always be in a minority in London.
In November 1798, he sent proposals to Cornwallis. The under secretary, Edward Cooke, wrote a pamphlet setting out the benefits of union and a spate of others, financed by secret service funds, followed. But opposition arose almost immediately.
In January 1799, the Dublin lawyers, merchants and bankers condemned the project and Cornwallis dismissed a number of objecting office holders. Dissenting MPs were promised benefits if they supported union or resigned and some MPs, lords and borough patrons offered support for a price.
Cornwallis wrote to a friend that while he despised himself for negotiating and jobbing with “the most corrupt people under heaven”, he would march steadily to his point because the object was great and the British Empire might depend on its attainment.
However, the “dirty work” as he called it wasn’t completed on January 22nd when the speech from the throne hinted at union. An amendment to the reply which would have rejected the concept was only defeated when an MP was “turned” in the Commons chamber with the promise of a peerage and a motion to approve the reply was defeated by five votes. Still, the opposition had to withdraw a motion objecting to union in principle, when it seemed likely to fail.
In February, Pitt obtained approval for resolutions favouring a union from the Lords and Commons in London.
In June, Cornwallis sent an outline bill to College Green and began a tour to seek support from the local gentry and to receive carefully organised petitions and addresses. They included a number promoted by the Catholic bishops who hoped that union would mean emancipation. Meanwhile, the work of ensuring a parliamentary majority continued quietly under the direction of the chief secretary, Lord Castlereagh.
The last session of the Irish Commons opened on January 15th, 1800. Next day, a motion opposing union was defeated by 42 votes.
On February 6th, Castlereagh tabled the Westminster resolutions and by the end of March they had been approved by both Houses.
On May 21st, he introduced a bill incorporating the resolutions. Five days later, it received a second reading and was sent to committee. On June 6th, it received its third reading and on June 7th, according to the Commons journal, “a motion was made that the said bill should pass”. Most of the 115 or so members who still opposed it left the House with, in the words of Henry Grattan, “safe consciences and broken hearts”.
The Speaker, John Foster, an anti-unionist, called for those in support to say aye. The reply was indisputable. He declared that “the ayes have it” and flung the bill on the table. Castlereagh took it to the Lords where the Lord Chancellor, Lord Clare, pushed it through all stages in a week, without opposition apart from the Duke of Leinster, 15 other temporal peers and two bishops. It was then sent to London to be passed under the Great Seal and returned to Dublin Castle.
A bill to compensate the patrons of 84 boroughs that would lose their representation followed. All, including anti-unionists, would be offered and would accept a relatively modest £7,500 per seat.
In London, an identical Union bill had passed and King George gave the royal assent on July 2nd. In Dublin, the lord lieutenant followed suit on August 1st.
Next day, farcically, the Irish Commons approved a writ for the election of an MP for the soon to be disenfranchised borough of Dingle I-Couch and in the evening Cornwallis praised both houses for their “conviction” about the benefits of the union.
He didn’t mention the new Irish and English peerages, the promotions, the judgeships, the pensions and the cash hand-outs which he and Castlereagh had dispensed for the benefit of up to 200 people.
On January 1st, 1801, the flag of the new United Kingdom was flown over the Tower of London and the Castles of Edinburgh and Dublin. It was also flown over the Market House in Belfast as a signal to the Dissenters of Ulster that the hopes of the United Irishmen were extinguished.
The two exchequers were amalgamated in 1817 and Ireland’s national debt disappeared until the Irish Free State was established in 1922.