The Minister who, since the first outbreak of war, had so resolutely struggled for the freedom of Europe, was no longer in power when Great Britain entered into negotiations with the First Consul. In the same week that Austria signed the Peace of Lunéville, Pitt had retired from office. The catastrophe which dissolved his last Continental alliance may possibly have disposed Pitt to make way for men who could treat for peace with a better grace than himself, but the immediate cause of his retirement was an affair of internal policy. Among the few important domestic measures which Pitt had not sacrificed to foreign warfare was a project for the Legislative Union of Great Britain and Ireland. Ireland had up to this time possessed a Parliament nominally independent of that of Great Britain. Its population, however, was too much divided to create a really national government; and, even if the internal conditions of the country had been better, the practical sovereignty of Great Britain must at that time have prevented the Parliament of Dublin from being more than an agency of ministerial corruption. It was the desire of Pitt to give to Ireland, in the place of a fictitious independence, that real participation in the political life of Great Britain which has more than recompensed Scotland and Wales for the loss of separate nationality. As an earnest of legislative justice, Pitt gave hopes to the leaders of the Irish Catholic party that the disabilities which excluded Roman Catholics from the House of Commons and from many offices in the public service would be no longer maintained. On this understanding the Catholics of Ireland abstained from offering to Pitt's project a resistance which would probably have led to its failure. A majority of members in the Protestant Parliament of Dublin accepted the price which the Ministry offered for their votes. A series of resolutions in favour of the Legislative Union of the two countries was transmitted to England in the spring of 1800; the English Parliament passed the Act of Union in the same summer; and the first United Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland assembled in London at the beginning of the year 1801. [Pitt desires to emancipate the Catholics.] [Pitt resigns Feb. 1801.] [Addington Minister.]