ONE:This was a serious position of affairs for the consideration of the new Whig Ministry. They were called on to declare, either that Ireland was part of the empire, and subject to the same laws, as regarded the empire, as Great Britain, or that it was distinctly a separate empire under the same king, just as Hanover was. The Ministry of Rockingham have been severely blamed by one political party, and highly lauded by another, for conceding the claims of Ireland on that head so readily; for they came to the conclusion to yield them fully. They were by no means blind to the[290] difficulties of the case, and to the evils that might arise from a decision either way. But the case with the present Ministry was one of simple necessity. England had committed the great error of refusing all concession to demanded rights in the case of America, and now lay apparently too exhausted by the fight to compel submission, with all Europe in arms against her. Ireland, aware of this, was in arms, and determined to profit by the crisis. Fox, therefore, on the 17th of May, announced the intention of Ministers at once to acknowledge the independence of Ireland by repealing the Act of the 6th of George I. Fox, in his speech, declared that it was far better to have the Irish willing subjects to the Crown than bitter enemies. The Bill repealing the 6th of George I. accordingly passed both Houses as a matter of course, and the effect upon Ireland was such, that in the first ebullition of the national joy the Irish House of Commons voted one hundred thousand pounds to raise twenty thousand seamen. The Irish Commons, moreover, offered to grant Grattan, for his patriotic and successful exertions in this cause, a similar sum, to purchase him an estate. Grattanthough a poor man, his income at that time scarcely exceeding five hundred pounds a yeardisinterestedly refused such a sum, and was only with difficulty induced ultimately to accept half of it.Reproduced by Andr & Sleigh, Ld., Bushey, Herts.
TWO:Otherwise the prospect was dismal enough, and some of the greatest thinkers of the age were profoundly affected by the conviction that they were on the eve of a vast convulsionthat the end of the world was at hand, and that the globe was about to emerge into a new state of existence. The unsettled state of society accounts, in some measure, for the prevalence of the delusions of Edward Irvingthen in the height of his fame; delusions from which such minds as Dr. Arnold's did not wholly escape. In reply to inquiries about the gift of tongues, this great man wrote:"If the thing be real, I should take it merely as a sign of the coming day of the Lord. However, whether this be a real sign or no, I believe the day of the Lord is comingi.e. the termination of one of the great ages of the human race; whether the final one of all, or not, that, I believe, no created being knows, or can know.... My sense of the evils of the times, and to what purpose I am bringing up my children, is overwhelmingly bitter. All the moral and physical worlds appear so exactly to announce the coming of the great day of the Lordi.e. a period of fearful visitation, to terminate the existing state of thingswhether to terminate the whole existence of the human race, neither man nor angel knowsthat no entireness of private happiness can possibly close my mind against the sense of it."It was not to be expected that the difficulties of Ireland would have passed away with the paroxysm of the crisis through which that nation had been working into a better state of existence. The social evils of that country were too deep-rooted and too extensive to be got rid of suddenly. The political disturbances above recorded, coming immediately after the famine, tended to retard the process of recovery. Another failure of the potato crop caused severe distress in some parts of the country, while in the poorer districts the pressure upon the rates had a crushing effect upon the owners of land, which was, perhaps, in the majority of cases, heavily encumbered. This led to the passing of a measure for the establishment of a "rate in aid," in the Session of 1849, by which the burden of supporting the poor was more equally divided, and a portion of it placed upon the shoulders most able to bear it. In anticipation of this rate the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Charles Wood, proposed an advance of 100,000 to meet the existing pressure. The proposed "rate in aid" was sixpence in the pound, to be levied in every union in Ireland, towards a general fund for the relief of the poor, and this was connected with a provision that the maximum rate should not exceed five shillings in the pound in any electoral[571] division. The proposition of the Government, with the exception of the maximum rate clause, was agreed to after a good deal of discussion and various amendments. In the House of Lords the Bill was carried with difficulty, after much discussion and the moving of various amendments.
